Spain and England will cap off a month-long football festival with the European Championship, where current and former icons have fallen while new stars have emerged.
The European Championship was first held in 1960, when the former Soviet Union beat Yugoslavia 2-1 in Paris.
The last final resulted in England losing at home, which is a great position to start taking a look at some of the highlights from recent Euros.
Just as in 1996, when England reached the semi-finals of the European Championship, the chant of football “coming home” echoed again in the hills and valleys of England. After 120 grueling minutes, on the hallowed pitch of Wembley Stadium in London, United Kingdom, Italy won the Euro 2020 title in a heartbreaking defeat for England.
Three young lions had been the heroes of the tournament for Gareth Southgate’s side, and the icons of a new generation of English hopes and dreams, so it’s the cruelest of ironies that Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka and Jadon Sancho missed their penalties. shooting. Luke Shaw, who, along with Saka, hopes to start against Spain on Sunday, opened the scoring in the second minute of the match, but Leonardo Bonucci equalised midway through the second half. Saka, who was then only 19 years old, crying in the field, but faced much worse situations when he left the field.
The Arsenal striker and his team-mates who missed their shots were subjected to a torrent of vile racist abuse on social media that shocked all of England in the days that followed and largely outweighed the deflation of sentiment on the ground. For Italy, this continued a 34-match unbeaten streak to win a second European crown.
Cristiano Ronaldo’s moment had likely come in the 2016 final, as he looked to take his illustrious club career to the overseas level with Portugal. The then Real Madrid ‘Galactic’ scored three goals to help their country triumph in the final against France, but was forced to limp after 25 minutes of the match due to injury.
The Portuguese dreams of him against a formidable French team, which would win the World Cup two years later.
But Paul Pogba, Antoine Griezmann and Olivier Giroud were on the left side after Eder’s goal in the 109th minute. The French had dominated all other statistics, but it was Portugal who won their first European Championship, making up for the pain of the 2004 final defeat to Greece.
Their most notable victory came in 2012, when they nearly beat a tough Italian team.
Spanish giants Real Madrid and Barcelona had returned to the top of European club football for more than a decade, while Serie A powerhouses were in decline. The Italian foreign team, however, continues to shine with the Colosseum gladiators who yearn to return to their former glories.
The masters of defensive stability stayed in position in defense with Gianluigi Buffon in goal and Giorgio Chiellini and Leonardo Bonucci as point guard in front of him. In the center of the field, Andrea Pirlo remained the master and commander of the Italian legions.
The force of European football advancing across the Mediterranean to the south-west of the continent, where the masters of tiki taka football were now playing their own game. With the Barça duo of Xavi and Andrés Iniesta and Real player Xavi Alonso pulling the strings in the midfield, the impossible Spanish resistance destroyed the Italians in each and every area.
John Jensen scored the first goal after 18 minutes to alert everyone that there could be a clash before Kim Vilfort settled the tie with 8 minutes remaining.
When Lamine Yamal made a great effort from outside the box to beat Germany and send Spain to the final on Sunday, a star was born and some other dazzling goals were added to the list of wonderful European and global goals. All the euros came in the 1988 final, when Marco van Basten fired a thunderous volley from the edge of the box to double the Netherlands’ lead over the then USSR in Germany.
Ruud Gullit’s dreadlocks and initial head also have iconic photographs deeply rooted in Dutch folklore. But it was van Basten’s purpose in scoring a hat-trick against England at the organisational level that will go down in history as one of the past moments of European football. not to mention the latter itself.