Player of the Tournament
Marcos Senna
We've summed up a team of the tournament over here, so there are your nominees. And of them, our winner is Mr Senna, for surname reasons, but also for providing the faultless base for all of Spain's successes.
Game of the Tournament
Turkey 3 - 2 Czech Republic
Predictable it may be to pick this one, but for pure theatre it can't really be beaten. The Dutch games against France, Italy and Russia may have had a better standard of football on show, but they couldn't really hold a candle to the drama of this one. The Czechs were cruising, and then a bit of luck, a howler from Petr Cech, and as sweetly-struck a shot as you'll ever see, and suddenly it was Turkey that were off into the quarter finals.
Goal of the Tournament
Ivan Klasnic (Croatia) v Poland
Not a great goal per se, but the story behind it makes it worthy of the award. Klasnic spent the whole of 2007 fighting against kidney problems, to the point where a transplanted organ was rejected. In the end, he came through the rehabilitation process and topped off his recent recall to the Croatian national side with the winner against Poland in an admittedly pointless final group game. It may have not been a great one to rewatch, but who are we to stand in the way of a nice fairytale ending?
Flops of the Tournament
Greece
The reigning European Champions may have been unfancied to make too much of an effort of defending their crown they shockingly won four years ago, but having topped their qualifying group with ease, there was the expectation that they would at least have a go. Sadly for their fans, but mercifully for the rest of us, their Bolton-esque approach to negative football was found out here, and the team got an early flight home with their tails firmly between their legs. A solitary goal and no points gathered from their three games was the net result of failing to learn a new trick in their four years as champions.
Team of the Tournament
Turkey
Spain, schmain. Who needs the actual trophy to be crowned as the team of the tournament? Fine, Spain, Holland and Russia all played better football, but winning games comfortably is so very passé. The Turkish side were ahead for all of around 15 minutes in their five games in the tournament, and yet were desperately unlucky not to make the final, with a goalkeeping blunder and the blight of German efficiency (3 shots on target, 3 goals) seeing them crash out in the last four. Still, they gave us all a very good reason to watch every one of their games until the final minute. Sneak out of a Turkey international early to beat the traffic at your peril.
The Fernando Alonso Bridge Burning Award
Luis Felipe Scolari
The "will he go to Chelsea" question hung over Big Phil's head like a media-driven storm cloud as he came into the tournament, but ahead of Portugal's opening game, Scolari was in no doubt. “If I decide to leave the squad or stay, I’m only going to make a public declaration at the end of the tournament,” he trumpeted to the assembled press. Four days later, and very much not at the end of any tournament, he was duly announced as the new Chelsea boss. Still, he was almost true to his word, in a way, as the Portugal side never seemed to recover from the announcement and their tournament ended plenty early a week later with elimination in the quarter finals.
James Allen Award for Insightful Broadcasting
ITV
It is a constant of international tournaments in the UK that however bad the Beeb gets, with their smug sofa of pundits, awful puns from Lineker and increasingly senile Motson prattling on in the commentary box, ITV will always find a way to be that much worse. Right from their opening game, where Steve Rider was proud to announce that ITV was "the only channel where you can watch Portugal" as if that mattered to UK viewers because of some vague notion one of the producers had that we all loved Cristiano Ronaldo because he plays for Man Utd, it was awful. Clive Tyldesley and Peter Drury hyperbolised their way through their usual stereotype-heavy commentary, David "Terry Sheddingham" Pleat continued to bring his own unique take on the English language to our battered ears, and Andy Townsend continued to use "literally" every fourth word in his studio analysis, flanked by a different failed England player or bored-looking non-English speaking player every game.
The Robert Mugabe Award for International Relations
Steve Rider
The improbably-haired one knows how to treat his studio guests well. When Manchester City's German midfielder Dietmar Hamann took time out from his busy schedule of not talking to Steve Rider to join him and Townsend in the studio for the Russia v Spain semi-final, Rider made a poor quip about a recent England cricket game during the half time analysis, adding smugly on the end "You wouldn't understand that, Didi, don't worry". He couldn't have been any more patronising if he had walked over to the bemused-looking German, ruffled his hair and cooed "Aaaaw, don't you people have cricket? No? No? Who's a silly little German, then?" as the camera faded to an advert break.
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