DER BEST EVER EURO FINALS GOAL (Fat Eck’s EURO 2004 Diary, NON MATCH-DAY 2)

Because Gerd Muller’s opening strike for West Germany in the 1972 final is not included. THAT’s why!!

Right - the Beeb have got the one which is already everyone’s favourite in there: Van Basten - Rinat Dasaev, Olympic Stadium, Munich, 1988. Okay, that’s fine. Big Marco’s spell-binding net-burster is my most memorable goal ever of the European Championships - followed in second place by Patrick Kluivert/David Seaman’s combined effort at Wembley the same 1996 night Super Ally hit my THIRD most memorable European Championhips goal.

BUT this is because I was old enough to “memorably” experience all these net-bursters as they happened. HOWEVER - having seen plenny footage of goals scored in the finals of this competition which took place when I were but a bouncing blue baby, I KNOW which is the best goal ever scored in the EUROS:

Heysel Stadium, West Germany v USSR, 1972 final. This is when the Germans were every bit as beautiful to watch as they were reliable to bet on. Just at the beginning of their thirty years of world dominance. For me the true beuty in football is continual winning and this side did justthat by exploiting their opponent’s whichever way they could. In this case it was all-out power-play - like an Ice Hockey team on the rampage - and it was WONDEFRUL.

Runners-up at the 66 World Cup, third place at the 1970 world cup. Total football taking a foothold in the Nationalmannschaft but, as yet, raw and youthful. The Borussia Moenchengladbach players featured widely in this side as well as the Bayern backbone. This was steel which positively DAZZLED.

Ask me to name my “fantasy match” and it would be Brazil 1970 versus West Germany 1972.

Anyway, the crowd at the Heysel is two-thirds German and the atmosphere’s electric as every archetype of early seventies fussball is sewn together in one magnificent piece of art. Franz Beckenbauer, “Spielfuhrer” armband on the long, white sleeve, roams elegantly up to the half-way line then gets the head down and turns sweeping-up into instigation of an attack. He lays it up to Gerd Muller, his Bayern team-mate, with back to the box he dominates like no other player in the world. Muller tips the ball into the path of the swashbuckling Gunter Netzer. The ball bounces slightly, Netzer’s flowing mane flaps in the breeze as he tilts back and skelps a viciously elegant volley from 20 yards out, off the face of the square bar.

The ball rebounds out to the right hand corner of the box where Netzer’s Moenchengladbch team-mate Jupp Heynckes awaits - he thwacks in another rasping volley. Rudakov, the Soviet keeper parries and Muller - master poacher - is behind a Soviet built defence in a way the CIA of the day could only dream of. He’s first to the loose ball and probably handles it rather than chests it down but he whips it into the net so quickly no-one can notice.

Van basten’s volley? LAZY! Muler’s tap-in - the artist’s signature on a breathtaking canvas.

Aye, I’m missing the LIVE games …

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Published:
06.29.04 / 8pm
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