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Midfield power

8.07.2008, by Michael Comments (0)

Wesley Sneijder/Photo: flickr.com

Little surprising the midfield of the fanline08.at EURO team is mainly made up of the Spanish Champions.

The best defence men of EURO 08 demonstrated that modern defenders also want to have a say in the front. Therefore, they cooperated closely with the midfielders. And European Champion Spain implemented this concept in an extraordinary way. Xavi Hernandez certainly was one of the top men to do so; UEFA has also appointed him best player of the tournament. The reason: “The 28-year-old player of FC Barcelona participated in five of the six Spanish games and guaranteed that Spain won its first great title since 1964. His skills in getting the game going were the main reason for the UEFA Technical Study Group to appoint him best player of the tournament.” But also his team colleague Marcos Senna performed incredibly. Many attacks by the opposing teams were not impeded by the defence but already by midfielder Senna, a born Brazilian.

Wesley Sneijder could have outperformed Xavi as best player. But that would only have been possible if the Dutch had not been forced to go home already in the quarter-final phase. During the group phase the 24-year-old was considerably contributing to the Dutch team’s excellent performance. While he pushed forward in the offensive, he always had a good overview. Not least because of his two top scores in the matches against France and Italy he secured himself the Man of the Match award in the two games. Also Lukas Podolski deserves a regular position in the midfield. In the first two group matches Podolski, who was born in Poland, scored all the three goals of the German national team. In the quarter final against Portugal and in the semi final against Turkey he prepared one score each. If he continues to be top scorer in his home club Bayern München as well, he might even outperform Miroslav Klose and Luca Toni as striker one day - the latter had, after all, been rather disappointing during the EURO.

Podolski’s team colleagues will not earn themselves a position in the start formation of our fanline08.at EURO team. But Michael Ballack and Bastian Schweinsteiger contributed considerably in pushing their team into the final. Ballack is also mentioned in the UEFA All Star Team, and Chairman Andi Roxburgh founded his decision in the following: “Ballack was one of the decisive figures on Germany’s way towards the final. And he has scored the European Championship’s most excellent free-kick goal.” After his red card against Croatia and the resulting absence in the game against Austria, Schweinsteiger was soon in top shape again. In the quarter and in the semi final he scored a goal each, in the match against Portugal he assisted the scores. Compared with the extraordinary performances of their team colleagues Xavi and Senna, the good performances shown by Andres Iniesta, David Silva and Cesc Fabregas suffered a bit. But their contribution to the Spanish victory must not be underestimated. Two further excellent key figures are Luka Modric from Croatia and Hamit Altintop from Turkey. Both players showed hardly any mistake, organising their teams’ midfields in a great way.