Losing Is The New Winning At Euro 2008

And here’s why:

If you win your group early, you’re screwed. Because that makes your final group game essentially non-competitive. Not even on par with a friendly because you deliberately pick a weakened team.

And it makes perfect sense: Players need a rest. Players need to avoid bookings. Squad players want to get a game. But seems it isn’t worth the trade off for the inevitable loss of momentum.

Portugal, Holland, Croatia and Spain all looked good in their first two group games, secured six points and then gave their main men a day off.

But when the first choice XI stepped back up for the quarter finals things didn’t go quite to plan.

First Portugal were taken apart by a German team that had to field their best eleven to beat Austria and secure second place in Group B. Then Croatia lost to a Turkey team that had fought back for a famous late win over the Czech Republic in Group A and a day later the Dutch were outplayed by a Russia team who had needed to beat Sweden in their final Group D game.

And Spain came within spot kicks of going out last night against Italy, who had needed a win over France in their final Group C game to make the quarters. Spain avoided the curse of the Group winners, but only just.

So teams who had to fight for their lives in the previous game had the edge over teams who coasted through the last game safe in the knowledge they had already qualified. Seems it’s all about momentum and maintaining a competitive edge.

And maybe it’s also true that losing a group game forces players and teams to take a long hard look at themselves.