UEFA Euro 2008

The 2008 UEFA European Football Championship, commonly referred to as Euro 2008, is the 13th UEFA European Football Championship, a quadrennial football tournament for European nations. The tournament, which is being hosted by Austria and Switzerland, began on 7 June 2008 and is scheduled to conclude with the final at Ernst Happel Stadion in Vienna on 29 June 2008. It is the second successful joint bid in the competition's history. Greece were the defending champions, having won the previous tournament.

Sixteen teams are participating in the tournament. Austria and Switzerland automatically qualified as hosts; the remaining 14 teams were determined through qualifying matches, which began in August 2006. The winner of Euro 2008 will qualify for the 2009 FIFA Confederations Cup in South Africa.

Summary

Qualification for Euro 2008 started in August 2006, just over a month after the end of the 2006 FIFA World Cup. The qualifying tournament was contested by national teams from each of UEFA's member associations, with the exceptions of Austria and Switzerland, who had qualified for the finals tournament automatically as hosts, and Montenegro, who came into existence too late to be admitted to UEFA. England was the only seeded team not to qualify for the tournament proper, whereas Russia was the only unseeded one to qualify.

The draw for the finals tournament took place on 2 December 2007, and saw Group C immediately labeled as the "group of death", with Italy, France, Romania and the Netherlands competing for two qualifying places. In contrast, Germany and Portugal were deemed to have an easy draw, as the tournament structure meant they could not meet Italy, France, the Netherlands or Spain until the final.

In the group stage, Croatia, Spain and the Netherlands all qualified with maximum points. Austria and Switzerland were not expected to progress, despite the advantage of being the hosts. In Group A, the Swiss lost their captain, Alexander Frei, to injury in the first half of their first game, and became the first team to be eliminated from the tournament after losing their first two matches. Austria fared slightly better in Group B, managing to set up a decisive final game against Germany, dubbed "Austria's final". However, they lost by one goal, making Euro 2008 the first European Championship not to have one of the host nations present in the knockout stage. In an exciting final game in Group A, an injury- and suspension- hit Turkey beat the Czech Republic after an uncharacteristic handling mistake by Petr Čech in the last few minutes left Nihat Kahveci with the simplest of finishes. In the same game, goalkeeper Volkan Demirel was shown a red card for bizarrely pushing Czech striker Jan Koller to the floor. The Turks joined Portugal as the qualifiers from Group A. France were the high profile victims of Group C, recording just one point from a 0–0 draw against Romania in their opening game. Italy beat the French on the final day to finish on four points, joining the Netherlands in the quarter-finals. Finally, in Group D, Greece failed to reproduce the form of their shock 2004 win, and ended the tournament with no points. Russia qualified at the expense of Sweden, after beating them in a final game decider, joining Spain in the knockout stage.

In the quarter-finals, the Portugal team was unable to give their coach Luiz Felipe Scolari a fitting send-off, following the mid-tournament announcement that Scolari would be leaving to join English club Chelsea, losing in an exciting game against Germany. Turkey continued their streak of last-gasp wins, equalising at the death of extra time against Croatia, and advancing on penalties. Coached by Dutchman Guus Hiddink, Russia eliminated the Netherlands with two extra time goals. The final quarter-final saw Spain defeat Italy on penalties after a 0–0 draw in normal time.

In the semi-finals, Turkey's luck ran out against Germany. Turkey entered the game with 9 of their squad missing due to injury or suspension. After going 1-0 up, and also leveling the game 2-2, Germany scored the winning goal in the final minute. The world television feed of the match was intermittently lost during the match, which prevented the broadcast of the third goal by Germany. This was due to a thunderstorm at the broadcasting relay station in Austria, despite the game being played in Switzerland.