Sure, why not! 
And we’re off! :D:D
10 minutes in I was saying that Germany was going to win because Spain is a bunch of pussies. I still think Spain is a bunch of pussies, but Germany’s defense sucks.
There was something in the air that night, the stars so bright…
Congratulations to Spain! A well-deserved trophy!!
Congratulations and celebrations! I guess nobody’s working in Spain tomorrow
And Torres’ goal was quite a beauty!
For everyone that watched: What the living hell was with the opening ceremony thing? That could be the most bizarre event/thing, utterly absurdist, that I’ve ever seen for an international audience and at an event where millions of dollars were involved. It sort of blew away all the opening Olympic ceremonies I can recall.
But yea, Spain played brilliantly, against both Germany and Germany’s 12th man, Senor Rossiti.
Congrats, y’all, I’m so happy spain won and that I was proved wrong. Spain should have scored about a milion times during the second half so I was fearing that the Germans would snatch the opportunity and go for the equalizer but they didn’t.
Obviously I’d have wished for Holland to have made it to the finals and by all means they should have won but this is certainly a European Champion I can live with, very much unlike those Greek… Entonces, felicidades, los Españoles!
Well played, sir.
Great thread, great tournament and, needless to say, best ending everrr for us.
Thanks as well to any and all who supported us and to those of you that who didn’t, well, there’s always next time.
Trust you won’t have wait as long as we did.
Till the next one, we are:
~España~
- Euro 2008 Champions -
Pues muchísimas gracias, Švejk! Y si, lo admito, la alegría me llevo a las lagrimas al final. Esta claro que no fui el único…
Hope your wonderful footballing nation gets to cry the same tears of joy the next time.
Warning: it’s emotionally draining. But is it EVER worth it!
Off to watch the the match…over and over again just to make sure we didn’t score a couple more than the final score shows. 'cause it sure seemed that way to me. Besides, this recording is in full digital color as opposed to those Paleolithic black and white tapes from 1964. 
Night all. And thanks again.
Did anyone else experience audio trouble with the ABC (USA) feed? The audio I received was in mono rather than stereo and had fairly serious phasing problems which were especially noticeable on the announcer’s channels.
I checked other stations and they were all working properly and there was no problem with the audio in the match ABC televised a week or so ago (it was Netherlands vs… I don’t recall).
Anyone have this issue today?
Congratulations to Spain! A worthy & deserving champion.
Question to US watchers (and others?).
Who was the brunette gal in the NikeSoccer ads that showed the 1st person PoV of the guy progressing to Arsenal then the Dutch national team while training hard the Nike way? She looked familiar, but I couldn’t place her.
The guy is Robin van Persie - although he’s not sponsored by Nike, apparently. Anyway, maybe that helps. I couldn’t identify the lady. Van Persie is married to a Maroccan girl, I don’t think that’s her.
C’mon, you can hardly argue that Rosetti favoured Germany – Spain should have had only ten players on the field after Silva’s headbutt against Podolski.
On the whole, though, Spain clearly played better than our boys, simple as that.
Oh, come on. That was the most piffling little bit of handbags I’ve ever seen, and the referee was entirely sensible to avoid ruining the final, and ignore it.
I wouldn’t say the referee favoured Germany in particular - happily, there seemed to be no game-changing decisions for him to make, even when the tension briefly threatened to bubble up. The carding of Casillas for attempting to calm down a situation was risible, however, as was that of Torres for a 50/50 clash of heads. In the former instance it seemed as if he had decided that because he was (correctly) carding Ballack, he had to card a Spanish player, and picked the nearest one despite his complete lack of involvement. Bungling.
No, but the BBC feed seemed to be troubled by a sort of nasal stuttering throughout.
Incidentally, I don’t know if people abroad will be able to view this, but this was the BBC’s utterly hilarious final montage. It’s just … well, I don’t know what it is.
I believe he carded Torres because he didn’t think Torres was really trying to play the ball, but rather was taking the opportunity to simply bash his opponent in the face with his head. Frankly, I thought the same situation occurred in the clash that got Ballack his cut, though as a general rule, as a referee, I admit that trying to decide something like that has happened is very difficult.
The main complaints from the German supporters are that there was no red card for the “head butt,” and that the referee blew for a foul late in the game against the Germans that no one can believe was a foul; instead a German goal should have happened. As to the first, I agree with you that the so-called “head butt” was a nothing, merely a faint at it, which to his credit Podolski didn’t immediately fall to the ground as if pole-axed from. As for the latter, the replay quite clearly shows Ballack or Kuranyi (I can’t recall which at the moment) running over the Spanish defender from behind as the ball goes by to Schweinsteiger. That’s a foul every day, and was rightly called.
Not saying the referee had the best of days, but he wasn’t biased and, as you say, he didn’t really blow anything horridly that would have changed the game. I think the worst misses of the crew was Lehman’s rather obvious handling of the ball outside the area and a similar incident by the Spanish in their own penalty area early in the game. But, as we know from 1986, determining that a player has handled the ball can be quite difficult without the benefit of slow motion replay… 
Well, at least Jens Lehmann has demonstrated his enduring class.
What a penis. I have to say, despite my culturally ingrained antipathy towards the German national team (note: not Germans in general) I genuinely like a lot of the German squad. Metzelder has a simply brilliant beard. Podolski acts like a teenager who’s been allowed to play Pro Evo Soccer FOR REAL, which is hugely endearing. Schweinsteiger’s hair is so terrible you kind of have to like him, plus his name (if you wilfully misinterpret it) means “pig-mounter”. Torsten Frings looks ace, has an ace name, and is actually pretty good at football, which is really just a bonus at this point. Even Ballack, who has dual handicaps in playing for both Germany and Chelsea, I have a lot of time for.
But Lehmann is just a massive knob.
I’d really like to know who Philipp Lahm slept with to get named in the team of the tournament, though.
Whoever it was, you will note that Sergio Ramos didn’t sleep with them. 
ETA: You will also note that UEFA’s technical committee asserted that the supposed best player in the world, Cristiano Ronaldo, didn’t make the team because Portugal didn’t advance so far. But there are something like three other Portugese on the team. :dubious: :smack:
I don’t think that guy is supposed to be RvP (who is under contract with Adidas), though he is the only current Gunner who also plays for the Netherlands. The guy’s right-foooted, unlike lefty Van Persie. And the first team we see the guy with isn’t RvP’s former team Feyenoord (I don’t know who it is, but it’s not Feyenoord).
I thought he was supposed to represent the viewer - he’s us, some anonymous guy who makes good.