Product Description

On 7th June 2008 the 13th UEFA European Championships kicked off amidst a huge fanfare. The tournament's first game took place in Basel and saw joint hosts Switzerland take on the Czech Republic in an action packed game that set the scene for a magical month of football. The group stages that followed provided some unforgettable action with teams like Portugal, Holland and Spain setting the pace and showing the rest of Europe how free scoring football should be played. The slogan of the tournament; 'Expect Emotions' certainly delivered on its promise with game after game of non-stop action and breathtaking goals. Who can forget Croatia's heart-breaking defeat by Turkey in the quarter-final penalty shoot-out or Turkey's last minute exit at the hands of Germany following their brave campaign? Russia's excellent performances surprised and impressed many culminating in an awesome display that left Holland's European dreams in tatters. As the tournament reached a clamax on Sunday 29th June, two teams were left to battle it out at the Ernst Happel Stadium in Vienna for the biggest prize in European football. Germany, perhaps not a surprising finalist, and Spain, reaching this stage for the first time in over 20 years. A fantastic match followed filled with passion and drama with both teams struggling to gain dominance, perhaps fittingly for such a final it was decided by a sublime strike from Fernado Torres, who gave Spain their second European Championships and their first major trophy in 44 years. No football fan should miss this DVD and the opportunity to relive all the action, drama and goals from a simply unforgettable football tournament!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14539 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-08-11
• Rating: Exempt
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Dolby, Full Screen, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 120 minutes

Synopsis
Highlights from the 2008 UEFA European Football Championship, which saw Spain deliver a crushing blow to Germany in the finals.

Customer Reviews

Comprehensive - but boring!
Every two years a major international tournament comes along, so too comes a DVD/VHS review. Some are good, some bad. The best thing that can be said about this is that it is comprehensive: all matches are covered, including all the goals and penalty shoot-outs. On the face of it, this is as much as can be asked of an 'official' review DVD.

Yet there are problems, the most prominent being that the producers have somehow used footage from an outstanding tournament to produce what is really quite a drawn-out and tedious DVD. For a start it suffers from the twin blights of many recent football DVDs: sub-standard post-hoc commentary and a wearyingly large number of replays.

Peter Brackley provides the narration between matches, but a raft of inferior commentators are responsible for the matches themselves, many of which are drawn out over 5-10 minutes while showing probably only 3-4 clips of action, replayed several times each. We do not need endless repeats of action snippets from incomprehensible angles when watching a film, so why is it any more acceptable on a sports review?

Other factors conspire to make this a three-hour marathon best watched in short segments: do we really need to see a montage of painted-face fans singing drunken songs before EVERY match? Do we need to see the team line-ups for EVERY match? Why not sacrifice these irrelevances for a little more real action, or better still, cut the whole thing down to a more palatable 90-120 minutes?

If this were a book, perhaps it would be an encyclopedia (reprinted four times) - useful for reference, but very few people read it for enjoyment.

The best Euro Championship yet
The one thing you really want/expect from the European Championship is drama and this one provided it in bucket loads. Certain moments in football can make you think that there is a spiritual script being written in order to generate the excitement of an international football tournament. Who could have expected some of the twists that we saw. Firstly, the form team of Euro 2004, The Czech Republic, falling at the hands of the Turks who came back 3 times from the eyes of defeat, each time taking longer to do it, before the Germans finally gave them a taste of their own medicine with a 90th minute winner. We were amazed by the flare of Holland in the group stages, making mince meat of France and Italy, the world champions and runners up who would have to battle it out once again just to qualify to the next stage!. They say that every International campaign has its heroes and we saw a few, both current and emerging talents, such as Croatia's Luca Modric, the Russian Andrei Arshavin, and Fernando Torres of Spain, whose single goal gave the Spanish their first European title in 44 years. After the brilliant Euro 2004, it was going to be a tough challenge to beat, but with great games, great goals and most importantly intense drama, Euro 2008 is a must buy.