Why a Spain win is a game win

Four minutes separated the final of the European Championship from extra time, which went in favor of the strong England and its calculating approach, but then the Spanish national team played another school action, creative and simple, which was crowned with a goal by Mikel Ojarzabal, and the title deservedly belonged to the team who played the most beautiful football and beat all rivals in a row. With the victory of Spain, football won, it is heard from all sides, but the victory of England would be the victory of the majority at the tournament in Germany, because other selectors also resorted to the tactics of the English Gareth Southgate, starting from the French Didier Deschamps to our Dragan Stojković, and they would not have been the first to reach the European title through overtime and penalties, consciously suffocating the game and playing for a draw.

Major competitions of national selections often do not meet expectations and there are always more bad games, with no or few goals, because most in the group, and especially in the elimination phase, calculate and wait for the opponent's mistake, but it seems that the just concluded EURO 2024 was a kind of culmination of football decadence, which should worry UEFA and FIFA, because, if this continues, the tournaments will soon be completely unwatchable for them.

EVERYONE HAS EARNED

But many desperate games, as well as good ones, brought a lot of money to the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA): it is estimated that the net profit from the 17th European Championship will amount to over 1,7 billion euros. The largest part - 935 million euros, UEFA will invest in the "Hat-trick program", that is, distribute it to all national associations during the next four years. Money is being invested in football infrastructure and so far 35 national stadiums and thousands of pitches and stadiums have been built across Europe. In the financial sense, all the participants of the European Championship were additionally winners, because all associations were guaranteed 9,2 million euros for participation, and the number increased with every point won and further placement.

Many others also benefited from the European Championship, directly or indirectly: the media, bookmakers, manufacturers of sports equipment, breweries, cafes... The host country predicts that it will earn close to one billion euros from the arrival of fans from other countries. And Germany, apart from the financial point of view, is also the winner in the organizational, and also in football terms.

The very fact that the matches will attract numerous hooligans and thugs from all sides called for caution and a large mobilization of the German police, and additional fear was instilled by possible reflections on the horrors of war in Ukraine, hundreds of kilometers east of the German stadiums, as well as the new state of war. in Palestine. However, in the end, it can be concluded that the public and secret police did an excellent job and that the tournament passed without a single major incident. There were smaller ones, and the actors of the majority were fans of national teams from the Balkans - Croatia, Serbia and Albania. There were also omissions in Germany, for many visitors unexpected, given that the country in question is synonymous with order and punctuality - from train delays to bad hotel rooms, but, most importantly, security was at the highest level in those a month, and 51 games were played, with almost 2,7 million spectators in the stadiums and a large number in the fan zones.

YOUTH IS THE FUTURE

Let's go back to the sports winners, and they are the most important, starting with the new European champions - the Spanish national team. Before the championship, it was not in the first row of favorites, regardless of the good games and results in the last two years and the victory in the League of Nations last summer, and, according to the estimates of bookmakers and experts, it was behind England, France, Germany and Portugal in terms of chances, and slightly ahead of Italy and Belgium. In the end, she won the title in an impressive way: she won all seven games, which no European champion has managed to do so far, and she defeated all the main and secret favorites - Croatia, Italy, Germany, France and England - in direct duels.

And the new golden period of the Spanish national team began with the arrival of Luis de la Fuente (61) to the position of coach at the end of 2022, although few believed that he would be able to end the series of poor results in major competitions since 2014 and be more successful than of his predecessors Vicente del Bosque, Julen Lopetegui, Fernando Jerr and Luis Enrique. Especially after the Spanish national team lost 2:0 in Scotland in the second match of the EURO qualifiers in March last year. But that was the last defeat in official matches, and since then, in 15 official matches (qualifications, League of Nations and EURO), Spain recorded 14 wins and one draw (in the final of the League of Nations with Croatia, but they also won that match on penalties).

De la Fuente made his name as a coach working with Spain's younger selections: eight years ago he won gold at the European Youth Championship (U19), then in 2018 he was the European champion with the youth selection (U21), and with the Olympic team in Tokyo before was second for three years, and when he took over the "A" selection, he relied on the players he had already managed (Simon, Rodri, Cukurelja, Olmo, Merino, Zubimendi, Fabian Ruiz) and made the skeleton of the future championship team out of them. He did not shy away from giving young players a chance, so Lamin Jamal, Nico Williams and Pedri played in the first line-up, and he also relied on several hardened aces (Carvajal, Nacho, Laporta, Joselu, Morata) and successfully combined youth and experience. And most importantly, he opted for attacking football, and this national team is a kind of replica of the one from 2008, which was led to the championship title by coach Luis Aragones. That is why many connoisseurs of football believe that with the European title in Germany, a new long reign of Spain began.

CONTRIBUTION OF SERBIA

In addition to Spain, the winners of the 17th European Championship include the teams of the Netherlands, Switzerland, Turkey, Georgia, Slovakia and Slovenia. And of course Germany, regardless of the fact that it finished the competition in the quarterfinals as the host. She ran into the future champions and only lost in overtime, and that game was really the final before the final. Germany, after a series of bad placements and desperate games in major competitions, finally lost under the leadership of coach Julian Negelsmann, and it can be said that together with Spain and some other national teams, they saved the championship with their open game.

First of all, England and France can be counted among the losers, despite the fact that one reached the final and the other reached the semi-final. These are the two most expensive selections, which were at the top of the list of favorites due to the number of stars in their ranks, but this did not decisively classify them as losers, because it has happened so far that the best teams by name do not meet the expectations of fans and bettors, but calculatively and the boring football they presented. They made it through the groups and the elimination phase, killing the game and relying on the individual creations of their stars, and the fact that they were tired of their fans is best shown by the imperceptible return of the national team to the country with silver and bronze medals.

In Germany, teams from Portugal, Belgium, Italy, even Denmark, followed by Croatia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Scotland and Serbia were also disappointing. In addition to the poor score balance, our national team has entered the ranks of the most unwatchable, and officially the most ineffective, with only one goal scored. Thus, Serbia made a significant contribution to killing the game of football and unfortunately it was not the only one, so it is reasonably expected that the umbrella football associations will react, just as they reacted in the early nineties, when the rules were changed, starting with the ban on returning the ball to the goalkeeper. That is why the attention is focused on Arsene Wenger, the legendary coach of Arsenal, who in recent years leads the FIFA sector for the development of the game of football and has already made proposals. New rules for offside are in circulation, as well as the introduction of a blue card, which would throw the penalized player out of the game for ten minutes, and perhaps some even more radical innovations that would make the game faster, more beautiful and more efficient.

The survival of Stojković

Dragan Stojković Pixi, by the decision of the Executive Board of the Football Association of Serbia, remained in the position of coach, and as it was announced after the online session, "he was given maximum support in fulfilling his next goals", which is, first of all, placement at the World Cup in 2026. In the adopted report, Stojković announced that "there will be significant changes in the playing staff of the national team", and in the analysis of the performance at the European Championship, he says that he is not satisfied that Serbia did not enter the round of XNUMX, but also that he is "proud of this team and this group of players because they showed how to play and fight for Serbia with their behavior, approach, commitment and attitude towards obligations". As he points out, "little things decided" the final ranking: he says that the defeat against England was undeserved and that his team "looked attractive, lucid and confident in the second half, but the goal was missing". We had to beat Slovenia, because we had "many more chances and shots on goal", and against Denmark, "with an extremely offensive formation and a big risk in the game, we tried to get to the goal and win the necessary three points, but as in the previous games , the realization was absent". Stojković concludes "that no one outplayed or humiliated us in any segment of the game, but on the contrary, we were the ones who forced the opponents to defend, and that was the case in all three games of the group stage" and emphasizes that "the continuity of play was achieved in big tournaments, which brings enormous benefits, both to the association and to Serbian football as a whole".

The vast majority of experts, journalists and football fans did not see what the selector stated in the report, but the most important thing for his survival was the decision of the most powerful man in the country, who interferes in everything, especially football, and who, after the first heavy criticism, decided to extend the mandate of his faithful follower, which was later verified by the leaders of the FSS, who were also appointed to those positions after consultations at Andrićev venc.