The best players of Euro 80

Yes you're right 1980 is available too.

 

My quick thoughts:

Krol was indeed seen as the only one who reached his usual level for Holland.

Names not mentioned here are Pfaff (great against Italy) and Clemence (comme knows which match I mean). Both had a key influence in key matches for their team.

Best player of tournament was either Rummenigge or Ceulemans. Rummenigge ultimately won the main trophy and was from the fancied country so he had an advantage. Both Belgium and West-Germany played not great football though (according to Germany's cheerleader Hesse in his 'Tor!' book the opinion in Germany was that they played decent for 75 minutes in the whole tournament).
Of course the press had here a bias but Ceulemans was higher rated.

Alternative opinion, which always exist (like Senna above Xavi in euro2008), in the Dutch press was that Schuster was the greatest in the tournament and not those two above.

Van Moer his performance was widely described as a 'resurrection'. It was unexpected (had not performed great in any high profile game of the preceding two/three years) and maybe the surprise overrated his performance a bit. It was anyway a nice story. The old master who did it again and did a Josimar like performance.

Zamora was indeed seen as the one who caused the greatest danger for Spain (especially against England).

Italy was criticized for defensive play and nasty traits but Scirea was close to flawless performances. Especially good against England but less so against Belgium.

Collovati is positively described. I have doubts about Gerets (but he was under close scrutiny of course).

Think that Allofs was indeed better as Hrubesch.


As another remark: the match for the third place should not be taken seriously.

 

Well the player himself admitted that he'd hadn't had the best of tournaments before the final. If he hadn't played in the final he wouldn't be looking at any * so I'd personally look at giving him a * rating with the large majority of that being for his performance in the final itself.

Not sure how others feel about it.

 

Where did he say that btw?

 

Not a bad call but you should also consider that the strength of a team is decided by the weakest links as well. Not only by the top performers.

 

http://uk.uefa.com/uefaeuro/season=1980/history-maker/index.html

[My place] was in danger. I had played three matches without scoring and if Derwall hadn't selected me, I couldn't have argued.

 

comme, to which extent is your rating decided by performances against England?

It seems that Zamora, Scirea and also Van Moer had all their best match against England. I've seen a few of the games of euro80 but I base this on the reports.

Don't mean it as criticism, it is something natural that happens but maybe something to consider.

 

OK, in Belgium and Holland it was the other way around. They knew Ceulemans was good while Van Moer was the surprise. A camera crew went even to the town where he lived and so on.

Van Moer was also crucial in the game against Italy just as Pfaff but now more in a defensive way. Thijs said: "If they play defensive, we do it too".

anyhow, thanks for the clarification

 

Van de Kerkhof says in that video that they went to the tournament with big ambition, LOL. Apparently he has forgotten what happened during that tournament.

 

I bought the 'uefa 50 classic matches' DVD boxset a few months ago btw and among those 50 euro matches it has only one euro80 match included: the final.

Tells a lot.

I also notice that the video posted by PDG uses the categorization UEFA likes to imprint in history: Ceulemans is suddenly a midfielder and Briegel a defender again

edit: euro84 has 5 matches included in the boxset

 

Schuster had a great game against the Netherlands. You can watch the highlights here:
http://www.123video.nl/playvideos.asp?MovieID=1091358

Also noticeable is how the ref fails to five a PK to Holland and tries to compensate that later on in the game when Matthaus committed a (rough) foul (not even a yellow in these days).

 

Found a good short profile about Van Moer, written during WC1982

http://news.google.com/newspapers?n...P1jAAAAIBAJ&sjid=UucDAAAAIBAJ&pg=2080,5936730

As addition I like to add that he returned to the NT only when Thijs assured to Van Moer that he had the freedom to decide the moment of substitution.

He indeed had quit top football before after he broke his leg four times, most notably against Italy in 1972. Van Moer (and also Dewalque) was greatly missed in the semi-final against West-Germany back then (in the Hardy Grune encyclopaedia that comme mentions it is also written what kind of hard day the Germans had in 1972 against Belgium).

After he broke his leg for the fourth time, he quit international football and also quit Standard Liege, which was back then a top side. He continued his career on a lower level.

Thijs gambled that Van Moer had enough ego to prove himself yet again because an old Van Moer often did good against the domestic top sides. Van Moer had however also the habit to drink and eat a bit too much so he was a bit fading.

Not many had predicted that he would perform well at euro80 because of the factors mentioned above: he was old, had not played on a top level for years (except those qualification games) and could only play 60 minutes they thought - he wanted to play for only 60 minutes that is.
Van Moer surprised everyone that it was him who stood out in the second half of the euro80 final, and not faded at all.

Some other good links:
http://www.goal.com/en/news/1717/ed...uropean-championship-xi-of-all-time-featuring
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/25/sports/25iht-soccer_ed3__18.html

This just as information. I took the information mentioned here from a chapter in a book written by a journalist that covered closely the euro80 tournament.

Van Moer was voted footballer of the year in 1966, 1969 and 1970. He came second in 1980, fourth in 1971 and fifth in 1981.
Only Paul van Himst has more footballer of the year awards.

 

It was surprising that Van Moer didn't make the UEFA team. Most summaries or reviews that I've read about the tournament said that Van Moer was one of Belgium's best players at Euro 80, if not the best.

 

Plenty of books have been written about the World Cup. Does something similar in English exist for the european championships?

 

How about the World Cups? There are obviously a few with narrative accounts and factual information on various things like the money involved and audience counts but does a book exists with statistics that goes deeper than just the goal-scorers, yellow cards and so on? For example the possession statistics of every game since 1966, and corner-kicks (because every game since 1966 is available).

 

Why wouldn't they?

 

OPTA obviously also has individual player data but I did not mean that advanced stats per se. I meant more basic things like corner-kicks gained/conceded, offsides, yellow cards/cautions, fouls committed and possession stats. Preferably since 1966 but I know that newspapers mentioned them since the 1980s. Corner kicks gained were infrequently mentioned since the 1960s, I know. Was just curious if that all (or some of these match-stats) is collected in a book but apparently that isn't the case.

Thanks for the clarification.

EDIT: as example, I have here a book covering euro92 and that one does have these kind of stats (they were also showed at the end of each game).

 

Do you know which kind of historical stats they've recorded?

 

UEFA and FIFA also collect team stats like shots on target and corners won. I know they did this since the 80s and the UEFA certainly since 1992. Maybe that is possibly that collected in a book?