European football championship tournament starts today.
This is a bigger event for me than even the Olympics in
Athens; football is my favorite sport. But one thing in
the tournament irritates me; the lack of a bronze medal
game. It really takes off some glory from the silver medal
winners, as they fall in the shadow of the winners. Their
achievement would more admired. Germany´s silver medal in
the last World Cup is seen as a good achievement for them,
and so is Turkey´s bronze medal. The previous bronze
medalists in the three World Cups are all victors in their
own right, not among the biggest footballing nations, they
succeeded to bring home a medal.

The bronze medalists of European Championships in the
past are viewed as losers, really. Czech didn´t gain as
much as fame as it really would have earned in 1996, and
I haven´t noticed that the Italian players that were in
the 2000 team have been thrilled because of their silver
medals. At least they haven´t bragged about them.

In the European Cup, the teams that would have played
for the bronze medal between 1984-2000 games would
have been in many cases teams that nobody expected to
survive to the semifinals; a bronze medal would have
been a great achievement from them and something they
probably, given the chance, have liked to win.

When the bronze game was dropped from the European Cup
after 1980, the competition was a different one, less
respected and the teams in the top four were among the
bigger national teams of their day. Third place in the
games wasn´t up to much for them.

Who knows, if there would be a bronze medal game, then
maybe England and Spain could once have something to
bring home back to the fans? Or Portugal to show for
the home fans, as they are unlikely to progress farther
than in the semifinals.