The days leading up to the final kick off of this Euro were obviously dominated by news surrounding the German team and the big shock came on yesterday afternoon. German captain Michael Ballack seems to have injured his calf muscle (strained or something like that) and now the whole country seems to wait for news on if he will be able to participate in the final tonight. This somehow feels like when everybody was waiting for some word out of Vatican city when John Paul II. was acing death.
Ballack had injured his calf before the 2006 World Cup which caused him to miss the opening match against Costa Rica, leading to headlines about "the calf of the nation" in the tabloids. The tragic lies in the fact that Ballack never won a big final throughout his career. In 2002 he was taking a shot at three titles with his club Bayer Leverkusen, blowing all three chances by losing the national championship on the last matchday (a 2-2 draw at Unterhaching with an own goal by Ballack), losing the national cup final in Berlin against Schalke 04 and losing the Uefa Champions League final in Glasgow against Real Madrid. He has won some titles during his stint with Bayern Munich, but the big European/International title is still missing in his collection.
Another traumatic memory might be missing the World Cup final in 2002 after recieving a yellow card in the semifinal clash with South Korea (Germany would eventually lose the final 0-2 against Brazil after a horrendous error by goalkeeper Oliver Kahn).
So with Ballack being in the prime of his career right now he desperately seeks this one title which will define whether he was a good or a great player.
If he really has to pull out there's numerous options and those are all discussed by the 82 mio coaches around the country. How about substituting him with Tim Borowski, who has always been labelled a "Mini-Ballack". Or what about changing the system back to a 4-4-2 with Bastian Schweinsteiger as the setup man for the strikers in centre.
What most people seem to forget is that Germany are facing the most complete team of the whole tournament. I haven't seen a match by Spain so far in which they didn't
look like they were in complete control. In Germany everyone seems to think that because Spain are favourites Germany will be able to upgrade their game considerably easy, just as they did against Portugal. And because they are missing David Villa up front the German defense won't be dealing with a huge threat. This completely disregards the fact that Spain played most of their games before the tournament with a 4-1-4-1 system, the same one they played in their awesome second half against Russia.
Well, we just have to wait and see, don't we?
Germany vs Spain 0-1 (Final)
There we have it, Spain - after 44 years without a title - won the final of this year's Euro championship and they well deserved it. Germany only had 10 to 15 minutes in which they were able to compete at the same level and then Spain took them apart completely. Even if I was rooting for Germany I still like to watch the Spanish game with balls reaching their destination at pinpoint accuracy. Does this team have any flaws at all? The goalkeeper is extraorinary, the defense is solid, the midfield is just pure magic and the striker is brilliant. And the best thing is, they are all still very very very young. This team could win it all over the next few years. Their only problem ist they have to do it without their coach and "grandfather" Luis Aragones. he will resign and head for Turkey to coach a club in Istanbul (which one of the three big names simply escapes me at the moment. It could be Galatasaray).
As I said, Germany never stood a chance. People will now question the decision to let Ballack play, they will debate if it was okay to start the match with only one striker instead of two, but in the end I don't think it would have made any difference.
After the game me and a friend took a walk towards the inner city of Cologne and while we were on our way we were passed by lots of cars with German flags. It seemed that because the Spanish victory was so clear everybody thought they might as well just celebrate the 2nd place for the German team. It was nice to see German and Spanish fans dance through the night.
All in all this was a whole new level from what we had seen two years ago at the World Cup. While defense was the main concept back then this year it was all about attack. Teams like The Netherlands or Russia were wonderful to watch and the best team of all - Spain - took the cup home. This will be a memorable experience!
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