Euro 2000 dances to Latin beat

Latin attacking flair, elegance and patient ball possession has been the key to success during the group phase. Portugal, France and Italy were all rewarded with a place in the quarter-finals after just two games.

The Dutch, still rooted in the creative football culture fostered by Johan Cruyff, also achieved the feat.

However, they were subsequently joined by Spain, Romania, Turkey and Yugoslavia – the latter two with a Latin style of play which treats an approaching ball as a friend, rather than a potential source of embarassment.

Footballing quality is not the only reason for the shift in power in European football, though. The billions of dollars that have flooded into the game over the past 10 to 15 years have brought with it a far more professional attitude to training and physical preparation at the top clubs.

Sides who might once have faded in the last 20 minutes are now able to play electric football for a full 90 minutes – witness the performances of Romania and Portugal as they both came from behind to beat England.

The demands of the lucrative European Champions League, in which most of the players in the quarter-finals have taken part, has taken gifted footballers and developed them into athletes.

However, there is one more reason why football is heading south to the Mediterranean this summer: the Northern teams are uncharacteristically bad.

With their three World Cups and three European Championships, Germany have the best football record of any European nation at international level. They also went into this tournament as holders.

But their humiliating exit – beaten 3-0 by Portugal’s reserves – was a fair reflection of the lack of quality in a side from which only playmaker Mehmet Scholl emerged unscathed.

Oliver bierhoff’s injury amid the surreal scenes of a training pitch invasion by local schoolchildren at Breinig summed up a tournament where everything went wrong for Erich Ribbeck – already their former coach.