Only a goal from substitute Niclas Füllkrug, in the 92nd minute, allowed Germany to draw – not win: equalize – against Switzerland. And so the Mannschaft took first place in Group A of Euro 2024, a first place that seemed like it couldn’t escape them and instead it was going exactly like that. Because Switzerland is an organized and quality team, because after Ndoye’s goal Switzerland had the 2-0 goal annulled for an offside of a few centimeters, because Wirtz and Musiala are two great champions, there is no doubtful about this, but Switzerland has almost canceled them out, certainly weakened them. Here, the result and Germany’s performance are an invitation to reflect on this European Championship still without sovereigns, without dominant teams, at least until now. Perhaps there is only one exception, and we’ll talk about that in a moment.
To understand what we are saying, just rewind the tape of the first two days of the group stage: the two big favorites of the day before, France and England, are both at four points and were held to a draw by the Netherlands and Denmark, but what matters most is that they offered performances that were not entirely convincing, certainly not brilliant, even against opponents of inferior quality; the same goes for Portugal, who will also have six points in the standings, it’s true, but they solved the first match – the one against the Czech Republic – only in injury time of the second half, thanks to Francisco Conceição, and then had an easy time against a Turkey in a seppuku version; Belgium even had to lose against Slovakia to wake up from their torpor and beat Romania. In this discussion, as we were saying, there is only one exception: De la Fuente’s Spain, which easily destroyed Croatia and clearly dominated the match against Italy – but the fact remains that the 1-0 Azzurri only materialized thanks to an own goal in the second half.
During the major summer tournaments, we often end up falling into an evaluation distortion: one that leads to confusing the results of a national team with the state of health of the football movement it represents. For goodness sake, it is certainly true that the great disappointments experienced by Italy, the two consecutive World Cups for which the Azzurri did not qualify, are the result of the structural problems of our Serie A, of an evident shortage of talent compared to the national teams of thirty or twenty years ago. But then, one might say, how did Italy manage to win the 2021 European Championships? And again: the France that won the 2018 World Cup and lost the 2022 World Cup only on penalties, the France that clearly has the best Euro 2024 roster, is the same France in which a second-rate championship like the Ligue 1, which represents a Federation whose managers have been accused of bullying and sexism by their own employees – this was written by the New York Times. A similar argument, only reversed, must be made for England and for Spain itself: the Premier League and La Liga are undoubtedly the championships that express the best teams in the world, yet the Three Lions national team doesn’t win anything – it’s not a way to say: nothing, in this case, means Nothing – since 1966, while La Roja is coming back from a round of 16 match at the World Cup lost against Morocco, from a European semi-final lost against Italy (!), from another round of 16 match at the World Cup lost against Russia (ahem) and from a round of 16 final at the European Championships lost against Italy (!!!).
The central point of this analysis is that it is conceptually wrong to draw clear, definitive judgments starting only from the results in the field. Otherwise there would be no healthy football movements, other than the national team that will ultimately win the European Championships. And of course it’s not like that, it can’t be like that. Another aspect that must be taken into account is that we are in a very distant footballing era, and therefore very different, compared to the past: today Switzerland, Denmark, Austria and many other representative teams are no longer so distant from the big European teams , given that they have players under contract with the strongest clubs in the world, given that they have trained and modern technical commissioners.
It is clear that the calculations must be done at the end of the European Championships. But it is also true that Italy’s understandable (self-)flagellation after the defeat against Spain was exaggerated to say the least. One might even say it’s out of place. Because in the meantime, so to speak, it’s not as if the other national teams have shone so much. And they didn’t even address it this Spain, or rather the best team – by distance – admired in German stadiums, at least so far. And it’s not a question of common mischief half joy: it’s that we should contextualise the analyses, it’s that it would be right to write about football matches without confusing them with the analyzes of the top systems, it’s that Euro 2024 hasn’t yet expressed any real excellence, it hasn’t no real sentences have yet been issued. So why should we issue them?
