Euro ’96 Beat: Best & Worst of Euro ’96

Best Team: Germany. The Portuguese played some lovely stuff, but as the media here repeated ad nauseam “they flattered to deceive.” England, too, played with great heart and occasionally pieced together some excellent individual moves, but Germany again proved itself as the consummate tournament team.

This time around it was more difficult for Berti Vogts’ boys. The squad looked light on proven firepower — Juergen Klinsmann aside — and was over-reliant on the rough stuff in its opener against the Czech Republic. But then the team was decimated by suspensions and injuries.

Nevertheless, the Germans played smart for the most part. If at times, they were a little dull (“[They’re] very well-behaved,” said team liaison officer Jeff Burnige. “More like a lawyer’s convention than a squad of footballers.”), they could occasionally set the place alight. Juergen Klinsmann was in marvelous form against Russia, but after he got injured, sweeper Matthias Sammer picked up the slack. And Dieter Eilts shone when the big stars like Andreas Moeller and Thomas Haessler couldn’t. A team performance.

Best Game: England 4, Netherlands 1. There weren’t any great games. Too many utility midfielders and not enough strikers up against five or more (if it was the Czech Republic 10 or 11) players behind the ball meant terrific matches were never a serious proposition.

A welcome and puzzling exception was England-Netherlands. Having earned four points apiece from two matches, the two teams could have gently conspired to produce a 0-0 tie and qualified for the quarterfinals.

They didn’t. Two goals apiece from Teddy Sheringham and Alan Shearer were the highlights of a match, in which the English buried a long-held inferiority complex about all things Dutch. Patrick Kluivert netted a late goal that saw a demoralized Dutch team into the last eight at the expense of Scotland.

Terry Venables later revealed that he’d spent months watching videos to emulate and beat the Netherlands and it paid off. Too bad for him that he didn’t get his hands on some videos of how the Germans do things.

Honorable mentions: England-Germany, Italy-Czech Republic and Italy-Russia.

Best Goal: Karel Poborsky (Czech Republic vs. Portugal). Having spent the opening 45 minutes pinned in their own half, the Czechs needed a truly inspired play from Poborsky to swing the match. Poborsky raced away down the right flank, danced past Fernando Couto and watched the ball take a lucky bounce off Helder before gently lobbing Vitor Baia from 20 yards.

“It was the easiest option,” the long-haired winger said without a trace of irony after the game.

Honorable mentions: Paul Gascoigne’s virtuoso second goal for England against Scotland; Davor Suker’s beautifully timed chip over the back-pedaling Peter Schmeichel in Croatia’s 3-0 win over Denmark; and the Hristo Stoichkov show —
a breakaway and volley against Romania and a curling free kick against France.

Worst Team: Russia. There were several candidates — the Turks didn’t win a game but nothing was expected of them, the Danes rarely sparkled and Italy went home early despite playing some of the best soccer of the tournament.

But the Russians were in a class of their own. We were told that the problems of 1994 were a thing of the past, that Oleg Romantsev and his boys were all the best of pals and that they were highly motivated.

Russia flopped. Andrei Kanchelskis was one of the worst offenders — “I don’t like playing out of position,” he said after the 3-0 loss to Germany — and Sergei Kiriakov was no better, sent home by Romantsev for “repeatedly undermining team morale” (note: he publicly referred to Romantsev as “that a**hole” whenever he wasn’t selected for matches).

The Russians came, shopped and then fell apart. One loss to Italy and one to Germany — “the only players I’d single out [for praise] were the ones sitting on the bench” was Romantsev’s verdict — and Russia was on its way home.

Runner-up (for morale): The Netherlands; (for play): Romania.

Worst Game: Czech Republic vs. France. If you want to really turn your loved ones off soccer, slip a copy of this in your VCR and see how quickly the den empties.

Two teams — one inept, the other clearly disinterested — put together a performance that added extra strength to the word tortuous. Fifty-four minutes went by without a serious effort on goal. The Czech highlight was winning its first corner in overtime. And the French can only look back at Zinedine Zidane’s performance and ask themselves, “Is this the playmaker of the future?” Factor in a half-empty stadium and the Euro `96 organizers trying to convince the populace that a $130 seat was a steal, and you have the makings of a real stinker.

Equally tedious were England-Switzerland, Spain-Bulgaria and, yes, Germany-Croatia in the quarterfinals.

Best Pundit: Ruud Gullit. Old players never die, they end up on TV. In an age where analysts are seemingly paid by the word, it’s refreshing to find someone who knows the meaning of the phrase “less is more.”

Hemmed in between the ultra-miserable Alan Hansen and the batty Jimmy Hill (“I like Sheringham. He’s a good player in his mind” — aren’t we all?), Gullit took center stage and shone.

Gullit’s an enthusiast, he’s played the games, knows the teams, the coaches and the players. Plus, he shoots from the hip.

While others were showing endless replays of Stanislav Cherchesov’s dreadful clearance that resulted in Italy’s first goal, Gullit chimed in with: “He’s a goalkeeper trying to play football. A goalkeeper is a goalkeeper because he can’t play football.” `Nuff said.

Or, as the panel debated the first half of the England-Germany semifinal from a truly biased standpoint, up popped Gullit to highlight Stefan Kuntz’s equalizer with: “Look at this goal. I love this goal.”

None but the brave … and woe betide the Chelsea locker room this fall.

Worst Referee: Leif Sundell. “You can’t play against 11 men, 70,000 fans and three officials,” lamented Julio Salinas after Frenchman Marc Batta had disallowed two dubious offside goals and denied Spain two clear penalties in its shootout loss to England.

If there was a uniform voice at Euro `96, it was that the refereeing left a lot to be desire.

We had Guy Goethals refusing to red-card Andy Koepke in Italy’s 0-0 tie with Germany. He awarded a penalty, Koepke saved and the 82 minutes later the Italians — and Goethals — were gone.

As were Peter Mikkelsen and Romania, after the Danish referee ruled against Romanian Dorinel Munteanu’s shot that hit the bar and crossed the line against Bulgaria.

“We’re going home because of some overweight, sightless imbecile,” wrote a Romanian columnist after the defeat.

“I didn’t see whether the ball crossed the line,” Mikkelsen was quoted as saying. “It’s not my problem. Anyway, England won the 1966 World Cup like that.”

But the overall award goes to Sweden’s Leif Sundell, who missed John Collins’ goalline handball during Scotland vs. the Netherlands and then went on to give one of the worst displays of officiating in the Germany-Croatia quarterfinal. Slaven Bilic — pushed away by none other than Sundell — was not even carded after stomping on and then slapping Christian Ziege in the face.

True, the players were very, very naughty in that match, but a firmer hand might, just might have made a difference.

by Soccer America Senior Editor Duncan Irving

SA All-tournament team