Spain's European Championships Record
The Spanish national football team are surely one of life's great mysteries. An enigmatic mix of talent and under-achievement has haunted them like a ghost for the last 40 years. On paper they are currently one of the finest national teams in the world and always look capable of winning trophies. However, with the 2008 European Championships looming in Austria and Switzerland, a gut-feeling deep down suggests that it is just not going to happen. During their qualifying campaign Spain showed a bizarre combination of both genius and the catastrophic. Who could forget David Healy's marvellous hat-trick against them in Northern Ireland's famous 3-2 victory in Belfast? Couple that with a four game winning streak and a convincing 3-0 victory over Sweden and you have the same old confusing Spanish team.
Spain's strikeforce can easily be viewed as one of the most lethal partnerships in world football. Valencia's superstar David Villa has skill, pace and trickery in his locker, as well as an impressive strike rate. His strike partner Fernando Torres of Liverpool has single-handedly kept his club team's season alive by scoring pretty much whenever he feels like it. Backing up these two stars are players like Tamudo of Espanyol, and Arizmendi of Valencia. Somewhat strangely though the national manager, Luis Aragonés, has exiled the team's all-time top scorer Raul from the squad altogether.
Spain's only major trophy in their history was when they won the European Championships in 1964. They were the host nation that year and it was also their debut in the competition. They claimed several high-profile scalps on the way to lifting the prestigious trophy in 64. A 2-1 victory in the semi-final over a highly-rated Hungarian squad was a pivotal moment in the tournament, the final was held at Real Madrid's Bernabéu stadium in front of over 125,000 people, Spain won the game 2-1 against The Soviet Union with a late winner coming from Marcelino Martínez after the USSR had equalised their earlier strike.
Over the years the team qualified for a further six European Championships, this year being their eighth appearance, but never recreated the form that saw them once lift the trophy. Since that famous victory 44 years ago Spain have built up a reputation as the perennial under-achievers of world football: a reputation they would happily put to bed should they achieve success in Austria and Switzerland this summer.
