PARIS—What a finish in Basel last night, a wild ending to one of the most exciting Euro semifinals ever played! Or so we’ve been told.

Didn’t see Miroslav Klose’s go-ahead goal in the 79th minute? Missed Turkey’s last-gasp injury-time charge, and the final whistle? Yeah, you and me both.

Apparently I was wrong to diss the copyright zealots over at UEFA. They so desperately need us to wire them money to watch those oh-so-precious match highlights on my tiny laptop screen, because they’re clearly too broke to disseminate live images directly from Basel. The entire world (save Swiss viewers in Zurich and anyone watching on al-Jazeera – wha?) missed two or three significant chunks of the second half due to what UEFA’s calling electrical storm interruptions in Vienna, some 800km away from the stadium itself. My suspicion is that UEFA conked its signal out purposely, so that we’d all have to go online and pay to see the Klose goal. Nice try, UEFA, but TF1 showed me the replay during the third blackout!

The BBC and ZDF have both launched formal complaints against UEFA. Oh no, not a formal complaint! Personally, I’ve always trumpeted the value of the informal complaint: a dude in jeans and a wife-beater hucks a brick through a window. There’s my complaint, sir.

Here in Paris, during the breaks, we were treated to a documentary about the failure of Les Bleus at this tournament. Grim stuff from the French. A ZDF executive called the debacle, “the most annoying balls-up imaginable.” Funny stuff from the Germans? Go figure.

The greatest shame is that we missed a single second of this contest. The game itself was a classic. This tournament’s ratio of good matches to bad is already way ahead of what any discerning sports fan could expect, and Germany and Turkey took it up a notch in an encounter few held out much hope for before the opening whistle had been blown, what with Turkey’s lineup decimated by injury and suspensions, and Germany’s historical ability to, well, win.

Time to dust off the ol’ Gary Lineker quote: “Football is a simple game; 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans win.”

But for the first 45 minutes, the undermanned Turks wiped the field with the pedigreed winners, ringing the crossbar through Colin Kazim-Kazim (love that name!), and then opening the score on Kazim(squared)’s second crossbar, this time finished on the rebound by Ugur Boral. I told Mlle. Trotter that the Turks needed to hold out for the next five minutes of German pressure, and sure enough, four minutes later, Bond-villain-in-training Bastien Schweinsteiger (apparently, he’s Angela Merkel’s favourite player, though what that says about her only Zombie Freud could discern) knotted the score at 1-1 on Germany’s only good scoring chance of the half.

The defenses buckled down a bit to start the second, but soon enough the end-to-end football was back. I’ll have to take UEFA’s word for it that Miroslav Klose scored in the 79th minute off a powerful header past an out-of-position keeper to make it 2-1.

Finally, Turkey had Germany right where they wanted them—one goal ahead with ten minutes to play. The comeback kids were true to form seven minutes later, when Sabri Sarioglu undressed Philipp Lahm in the corner and centered for Semih Senturk, who poked the equalizer past a slow Jens Lehmann, the old man looking rather aged on this night.

Having watched Turkey’s last three comebacks turn into victories, you just knew that they had another goal in them. And, true to form, you turned out to be grossly mistaken (way to go, know-it-all) when Lahm, fresh off being beaten on the equalizer, devastated Kazim-Kazim with a cut-back on the left side and, leaving the Turkish winger crumpled on the ground with what looked to be a blown-out knee, finished off a lovely one-two pass from Thomas Hitzlsperger.

We’ll have to take UEFA on their honour that the game ended there, since screens around the world froze in the middle of Lahm’s celebration. After a few more painfully annoying minutes of reliving France’s failure (there’s a great game going on right now, and I’m stuck watching this?!), TF1 cut back to the studio to announce that the game had ended, 3-2 in favour of the Germans. Of course, we didn’t really need to hear the result to know how the game had ended. Turkey had a magnificent run, but their greatest error—with all the pre-match talk of their depleted roster—was fielding an 11-man side to match that of the Germans. Hey, you chase the ball for 90 minutes against the Germans, and you pretty much know what you’re in for.

Semifinal 1 recap

Result: Germany 3-2 Turkey, in the highest-scoring semifinal since Germany beat the Swedes by the same score to advance to the 1992 final.

Top player: Though he was one of two culprits on the second Turkish goal, Philipp Lahm played fantastically at left fullback for the Germans. Pushing up and down the flank all night, he was cheated of a free kick (maybe even a penalty) when he was clearly taken out on the edge of the Turk penalty box early in the second half. His long cross in made it 2-1 off Klose’s header, and he was the brains and the brawn behind the slick winner.

Best goal: Schweinsteiger and Lahm in a dead heat. Lahm’s goal was bigger, but then again, the winning goal wasn’t scored by the man who German Chancellor Angela Merkel praises for his “fresh and open” attacking style. Oooooh, somebody’s totally crushing!

In-game beverages: Domaine de Salvert 2005 (Anjou Villages red). My mother called me the other day. “I’ve been reading your soccer stories,” she said. And then, “you sure do seem to be drinking a lot.” Don’t worry, Mom, this tournament isn’t turning me into an alcoholic. After all, don’t alcoholics attend meetings?

Semifinal 2 preview

If I’d asked you at the beginning of the week to put money on which one of the semifinals was going to be more exciting, offensive, open, competitive, tense, dramatic—what I’m getting at is, you would have said Russia-Spain, right? Never trust your money!

Common sense tells us that a penultimate match between two of this tournament’s most offensively-minded teams—and remember, the Russians have gotten better with each match—should be a burner. And both teams are pretty likeable, too. I’d be happy to cheer wildly for either of them to trounce Germany in Vienna on Sunday. Let’s cross our fingers for a great game, with many beautiful goals, decided in the standard 90 minutes.

I’ll even do my part to jinx the denouement that nobody wants to see …

… [clearing throat] …

Hey, gang, did you know that before this tournament, four of the last eight Euro Cup semifinals had gone to penalty kicks?! Wow, I just graphed it on my TI-85 calculator, and you know what? That means we’re due!

Prediction: Russia 0-0 Spain; Russia advances on penalties 2-0 (the graph of the victory is, predictably, a parabola)

photo: MICHAEL KAPPELER/AFP/Getty Images

Tags: Euro 2008

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Posted on Thursday, June 26th, 2008 at 10:10 am. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.