Spain and Xavi are dominant force in Vienna

SOCCER EURO 2008:AS THE winners arrived home to a jubilant welcome in Madrid last night and some 300,000 turned out at the Brandenburg Gates to show their appreciation of the effort made by the beaten finalists, the extent of Spain's technical superiority at Euro 2008 was underlined by their dominance of Uefa's official squad of the tournament.

Barcelona midfielder Xavi Hernandez, who rounded off a fine month by setting up the only goal of the game on Sunday night for Fernando Torres, was named as the competition's best player by a panel of assessors led by veteran former-Scotland coach Andy Roxburgh. Eight other Spaniards were named in the panel's 23-strong squad.

Torres, skipper Carles Puyol and Cesc Fabregas were all included, while three Germans - Michael Ballack, Philipp Lahm and Lukas Podolski - also made the list.

The squad, which was drawn exclusively from those sides that made the knockout stages of the tournament, was completed by four Russians, two players each from The Netherlands and Portugal as well as a Croatian, a Turk and an Italian.

There were a number of high profile omissions from the panel, including Portugal's Ronaldo, who had been named a few weeks ago as the player of this season's Champions League and had been expected to make a much bigger impact here in Switzerland and Austria.

Speaking in Vienna yesterday, Roxburgh insisted the vibrancy of the Spanish team was no surprise to those who had been watching the performances of the country's youth teams over the past few years.

"For more than a decade now, the top youth teams in Europe have been Spanish," he remarked.

"We have been watching this squad since they were a very young age. People like (Iker) Casillas and (Fernando) Torres - who scored the winner in a Uefa youth final. (Cesc) Fabregas first starred as an Under-17 player in one of our youth final rounds.

"We've seen the Spanish team win the last Under-17 competition in Turkey, and it was one of the best performances that I've ever seen from a youth team. The Spanish are continuing to try and develop the next generation."

The fruit of that work was abundantly evident over the past month and Roxburgh praised the way Luis Aragones and his men had sought to play to their strengths, overcoming significant handicaps in terms of strength and size, particularly against the Germans on Sunday.

"They stuck to their philosophy - they didn't try to be something different," he said. "If you're not big in stature, then you have to be quick, clever and technically gifted. And Spain underlined that.

"The way they play is wonderfully creative. It's about technical quality, possession play, brilliant combinations, keeping the ball even under immense pressure."

Xavi was singled out as the event's best player because, Roxburgh explained: "We think he epitomises the Spanish style of play. He was extremely influential in the whole possession, passing, penetrating kind of game that Spain played."

That approach, the Scot suggested, was reflected in the wider triumph of the teams that employed attacking or counter- attacking styles here over the last few weeks. "It (the tournament) been very high quality - and interesting things have happened. For example, there has been a drop in the number of goals from set plays - only one goal was scored direct from a free-kick. One reason for this is clever defending, with teams now trying to avoid giving away free-kicks on the edge of the penalty box.

"We had exactly the same number of goals as in Portugal (in 2004) but more have come from open play. This tells us a lot. First of all, there has been the combination play epitomised by the Spanish and not only in central areas - there has also been brilliant combination play on the flanks and wings.

"The counter-attacking has also been quite breathtaking at times," Roxburgh continued.

"In the past, they used to say that if you were a counter-attacking team, you were negative - but top teams now in the Uefa Champions League and European Championships have to have counter-attacking as part of their game, because it's sometimes the only time when there is space - and you have to exploit it."

The shift in emphasis from 2004 has clearly been dramatic, with the more defensive teams like Italy and France left struggling by the quicker passing games of the countries that did well.

From an Irish perspective it will be interesting to see what impact the tournament has on the thinking of Ireland manager Giovanni Trapattoni who has repeatedly cited the success of Greece four years ago as having the potential to serve as a blueprint for his side.

Here, the Greeks looked well off the pace and went home without having been able to make any impact at all. As Roxburgh clearly suggested yesterday, the opportunities for teams so heavily reliant on scoring from set-pieces were extremely limited and the rule changes of recent years in relation to tackling really started to have an impact with the sides that ran at or sought to pass their way through opponents at speed being rewarded for their enterprise.

For those coaches with rather more modest pools of talent at their disposal, however, this may not actually be an entirely welcome development, for the attraction of the Greek approach was that it was a highly effective leveller.

Vienna, meanwhile, was getting back to normal yesterday with only a few rather bedraggled looking Spanish fans still to be seen around the city where the huge fanzone had been dismantled overnight and the last of the tournament-related merchandise was being heavily discounted.

There is considerable satisfaction here with the way the tournament went, particularly after some of the problems that arose early on in relation to the funding of stadium construction, most notably in Switzerland.

As problems on a far greater scale rumble on in Ukraine, there can be little doubt that Uefa would be only too happy if the next European Championship is even close to being as big as successful as the one just finished.

UEFA SQUAD
GOALKEEPERS:Buffon (Italy), Casillas (Spain), van der Sar (The Netherlands).
DEFENDERS:Bosingwa (Portugal), Lahm (Germany), Marchena (Spain), Pepe (Portugal), Puyol (Spain), Zhirkov (Russia).
MIDFIELDERS:Hamit Altintop (Turkey), Modric (Croatia), Senna (Spain), Xavi (Spain), Zyryanov (Russia), Ballack (Germany), Fabregas (Spain), Iniesta (Spain), Podolski (Germany), Sneijder (The Netherlands).
STRIKERS:Arshavin (Russia), Pavlyuchenko (Russia), Torres (Spain), Villa (Spain).