Euro 2008: More Hard Luck for Spain

Spain have played brilliant football over the past week-and-a-half, running through Group D in Euro 2008 without dropping a point.

They certainly haven’t been rewarded for it.

When Italy beat France Tuesday to clinch second place in the “Group of Death,” it set up a showdown between Italy and Spain—two of the titans of European football—in the quarterfinals.

Sure, Italy are not playing to their top form right now. They look a bit older and a step slower than when they won the World Cup in 2006. But they won the World Cup two years ago.

They are the defending champions until knocked off. And Spain has to face them in the first knockout round.

Does this sound familiar at all? In 2006 Spain stormed through their World Cup group without dropping a point. In the first knockout round, they were rewarded with a match-up against Zenedine Zidane and France.

Like Italy, France had not yet played close to their best football. But they had plenty of talent, and the potential to play up to their ability at any time. They did just that against their neighbors, Zidane controlling midfield as the French cruised to a 3-1 victory.

France went on to lose to the Italians on penalty kicks in the World Cup Final. Some first round opponent, eh?

2006 wasn’t the first time the Spaniards fell victim to a tough draw. In the 2004 European Championship, Spain failed to get out of the group stage. The two teams that bested them? Portugal and Greece. Portugal and Greece would go on to face each other in the final.

Much has been made of Spain’s failure to produce on the big stage. And with good reason—the bottom line is, no matter how tough the competition is, you need to advance in the big tournaments. Spain are too strong a side to consistently fall short, even against the stiff competition they have faced.

But at the same time, in a sport where advancing one round further could be the difference between a successful tournament and an outright flop, the fact that Spain has consistently been tested far earlier than many of its European counterparts has to be considered.

The Spanish teams of the past four years could very well have made semifinal runs in Euro 2004 and the 2006 World Cup with a better draw. Instead, they never got that chance.

On Sunday, June 22, Spain will face off against the current World Cup champions in the Euro 2008 quarterfinals. If they lose, they will remember this tournament as nothing but another colossal disappointment, another failure to get over the hump. Newspapers across Europe will wonder: What’s wrong with the Spaniards? What needs to be fixed?

Maybe they just need better luck.