Jun
25
All good things come to an end and so did Turkey’s Cinderella run in the 2008 European Championships. After surprising the European soccer world and managing to make it all the way to the tournament’s semi-finals, Germany put a stop to Turkey’s dreams of a trophy win. But they didn’t go down easy, that’s for sure.
Germany won the first semi-final game (the other is between Spain and Russia in 2 days) with a 3-2 score against a Turkey team that was missing almost half the squad due to player injuries and suspensions. Turkey surprised the favorite Germany by coming out of the gates strong and actually creating more chances than their opponent. In fact, one can say that they dominated the play for most of the game. But it is hard to defeat the fine-tuned German soccer machine.
Turkey scored first with a Borel goals in the 22nd minute after a blunder by German goalkeeper Lehmann. Germany equalized 4 minutes later with Schweinsteiger finishing from a nice Podolski cross. After that it was mostly Turkey creating chances but having a terrible time finishing any of them. It was not until very late in the second half when Germany scored the go ahead goal with Klose. It looked over for Turkey except that in what has become routine for them minutes later Senturk made it 2-2 (another mistake by Lehmann; goalkeepers are having a bad tournament all across the board) and the game looked destined to go to extra time. Germany put their Turkey shoes on and after some excellent passing Lahm netted the winning goal for Germany who literally escaped embarrassment from a depleted squad.
In conclusion, Germany will go to the European Championships final game after 12 years and Turkey will have lots of great memories from this tournament. All we have to do now is wait for the results from the second semi-final game between Spain and Russia in order to find out who will be Germany opponent on Sunday night.