The great thing about this tournament was the competitiveness. Because there was no truly great side present, the business end of the tournament was compelling. Anybody could have won it. Even England.
England, in my view, with all of the advantages they had, left it behind them. Some will talk up this admirable Italy side, but they won the semi-final and final on penalties. This is not a dominant, superior outfit, as Spain showed. Moreover, they scored only 7 of their 10 penalties - which is a lower percentage than any team would be expected to get, on average. They are a united squad of character, however, and in international football, where the standard is lower than the latter stages of the Champions League, this is often enough.
I suspect that history will bear the above out, in time. I suspect that the Italians will, in all likelihood, fail to win another tournament, or even contest another final. That's, after all, what happens to most champion sides. England, meanwhile, have the squad depth to make another semi-final over the next three years. But without a fully-functioning, technically proficient ball-playing midfield, England will win nothing.
The lack of a great side meant we got a lot of gripping matches. I am putting together a souvenir blu-ray set of these finals, as I always do, and have decided that only 8 discs will suffice in the end, such was the surfeit of cracking matches. I thought the Russian World Cup could satisfactorily be summed up in 4, but this Euros has been far more gripping as the one truly fine side - France - got lost in their own complacent arrogance. Switzerland-France was a riot as a result, and Spain-Croatia was also marvelous fun. Italy-Spain was probably the best match, technically, narrowly shading Italy-Belgium, while Denmark-Russia was perhaps the most gloriously emotional.
Timing cost the Dutch everything. Injuries to key players and the loss of Ronald Koeman, who had them playing well, might have been avoided had the tournament gone ahead as scheduled last summer. As it was, they replaced a poor, but effective, manager with a poor and ineffective one, and lost Van Dijk and De Beek among others over the course of the season.
Joachim Löw utterly degraded his fading legacy by staying on after Russia. All great managers are allowed to crash - even Helmut Schoen had a disappointing exit - but Löw stayed on so long that his crash became a burning wreckage. He will now be remembered, arguably unfairly, as a man who happened to be in the right place at the right time, rather than one who actively created the correct environment in which to get the best out of a superb generation of talents (which he, more or less, did). Hansi Flick is in a great position - seen as a much-needed new broom with full scope to clean out every remnant of the Löw years. Germany will be serious contenders when they host again in 2024 - and will, quite possibly, use the Qatar World Cup to prepare the ground for that by going as far as any other European nation - because that's quite often what they do.
Wales did very well, indeed. They met a side that was better than them, but they had a fine tournament. Scotland, at least, were able to raise themselves for their most emotional game. They lack the talent, though, so any hope will need to be tempered by reality. For Wales, their era is probably up too. But they've had a blast, by any standards.
The Danes were magnificent and deserved better than to be bundled unsatisfactorily out of the tournament in the manner they were. England were the better side - as they should be given the disparity in resources and the home advantage they enjoyed - but being "the better team" is not a free pass to any final as the Spanish found against the Italians. England's regret is, unlike the Italians, they never capitalised on it.
Federico Chiesa and young Damsgaard of Denmark were the players who gave me most pleasure. The Swedish midfielder from Leipzig, Emil Forsberg, has been disgracefully airbrushed from this tournament's history. Yes, Sweden lost in the last 16, but he was magnificent in his four matches.
Overall, though, football is nothing without crowds. This tournament was a half-way house in a return to eventual normality. Hopefully we will all be out of the worst excesses of this nightmare when we arrive in...another nightmare: Qatar. Despite the joy of the last few weeks, that alone tells you that football is truly [insert expletive of choice here].
