It is an event to stun the whole football world into silence. Everyone except the Greeks, whose songs of triumph, launched into the Lisbon night, will surge on ceaselessly. The celebration of a cherished team who, with Angelos Charisteas’s header, won the European Championship will also be the delightful, noisy work of generations yet to be born.
Ricardo Carvalho drew a good save from Antonis Nikopolidis late in the game and Luis Figo’s drive was deflected wide in the closing moments of the final, but the result is not a miscarriage of justice. This was no fluke. A side seemingly without hope has ended the tournament as it began it, by beating Luiz Felipe Scolari’s team.
Every supposed failing is hereby transformed. If they had never won a match in the finals of any previous competition then how much greater must their pride be in transforming themselves at Euro 2004? Now these Greek players have fame of their own.
Theo Zagorakis, an equivocal presence at Leicester City, competed on equal terms with a famed midfield to overthrow all the preconceptions about this match. The Greece coach Otto Rehhagel has perfected the stifling of opponents, but their football was nothing like as dreary in Estadio da Luz as it had been previously.
Greece were the Euro 2004 lie detectors, revealing the bluff and prevarication of haughtier sides. Portugal, too, have had their failings exposed. Figo is the last prominent member of the golden generation that won the World Youth Cup in 1989 and he was joined by another, the substitute Rui Costa, but there will be no mature honour to set beside the trophies of adolescence.
In a country so excited by this final, people tumbled off packed pavements and accidentally slowed the progress to the stadium of a team bus that was meant to have destiny on board. They have much to be proud of in the craft of these players, but the absence of a real goalmouth expert has dogged them from the 1990s to this July evening.
The players, in a daze of sorrow, stumbled away from the presentation ceremony, removing the losers’ medals that had just been placed over their heads. Visions of such a scene had begun to sharpen in the mind from the 57th minute. Then, Greece disrupted a Portugal attack and broke to win their sole corner kick.
Angelos Basinas lifted it towards the near post and Charisteas, with a well judged leap, got the better of Jorge Andrade and Costinha to head home. Traianos Dellas had scored in just such a manner to devastate the Czech Republic in the semi-final but the move was so well executed that foreknowledge was no help to Portugal.
Greece might have had a day’s less rest than Scolari’s side before this game, but they were as hardy as ever. It was Portugal, knowing their accountability to their countrymen and just as aware that goals would be hard to come by, who had looked more tense.
There is high quality about the manner in which Greece deny the opposition. Late in the first half, for example, a spin by Cristiano Ronaldo seemed to invite Deco to tee up Pauleta, but Mihalis Kapsis pounced to intercept the pass. On another occasion, the inspiring centre-half Dellas made a perfect tackle on Ronaldo inside the penalty area.
Portugal were not adept at opening up Rehhagel’s team. It needed a leap and flicked header from Ronaldo to buy space from Miguel, whose shot was pushed behind by Nikopolidis after 14 minutes. The overlapping full-back, injured, had to be replaced before the interval and Scolari’s plans began to go askew.
Greece were not as limited as had been supposed. The resilient full-back Giourkas Seitaridis might have been part of a posse that harried Figo, but the side were not dumbfounded in possession. So swiftly did Dellas and Zagorakis switch the attack from left to right that Costinha, in the 12th minute, received the first yellow card of the match for bringing down a surging Seitaridis.
Another rippling attack, four minutes later, demanded that Ricardo move quickly to block at the feet of Charisteas. Portugal were not being allowed to build momentum as Greece constantly interrupted with plans of their own.
Host nations generally prevail once they get to a final, but a partisan environment did not dissuade these visitors. The benefit of being a small country may lie in knowing that numbers are always against you. In their steadfastness they challenged Scolari, whose Brazil won the 2002 World Cup, to demonstrate his famous gift for altering the course of a game.
For once, he could not do so. The pace did lift after the interval and, with it, the noise from the stands. Deco even appealed for a penalty after a Zagorakis challenge in the 50th minute but his unpersuaded team-mates showed no signs of hectoring the German referee Markus Merk.
They could scarcely have afforded to let their concentration dip at any point, yet they did so for Charisteas’s goal.
Portugal tried to respond but Greece’s appetite for the attack was greater than ever before at this competition and they at least held their own in mid field. Ronaldo drew a save with a long-range effort, but the time had come for Scolari to act.
The conservative Costinha was withdrawn and Rui Costa joined Figo in a hurried reunion built on desperation. There was improvement, with much more urgency to get into advanced positions before hitting crosses, but that did not really address the principal problem.
There was no one of true quality to meet them. Pauleta, without a goal at Euro 2004, made way for Nuno Gomes, but the alteration was an irrelevance and the individualistic Ronaldo could not quite prevail.
There were many theatrical touches by Portugal, but it is Greece who have commanded the stage of this European Championship.
· Greece’s upset win earned a Woking punter £332,000, most from two bets placed when they were 50-1 outsiders on June 23 and five days later when they were down to 10-1. “We believe the man is Greek,” said the William Hill spokesman Graham Sharpe.