Didn't We Almost Have It All?

After doing a piece about the greatest national soccer teams of all time, I thought I needed to do another list. As you know, I'm fond of those. This one covers the great national teams that didn't make it, but either came really close or should have. I give you the ten greatest national teams to not win anything:

10: Portugal's Golden Generation, 1996-2004
The Portuguese were completely out of international soccer from 1984 through 1994, but then gradually began building up a credible challenge for the big competitions. They were in the construction phase with a young Luis Figo and Rui Costa for the '96 Euro, but came into their own at the 2000 Euro, where they were arguably the tournament's second- or third-best team. This was Figo's team, and that's why I put the end to it at the 2004 Euro final in Lisbon. Cristiano Ronaldo had begun his emergence as a world-class player, but crucially, compared to the current Cristiano and the Ronaldettes Portugal team, this was an actual team with plenty of strength, from goalkeeper Vitor Baía all the way up to strikers like Conceicao and Nuno Gomes, all linked together by a balanced and creative midfield. As a team, not a backing group, there can be no doubt that this was the best team Portugal has fielded for several decades.

9: Czech Mates. 1996-2004
This team emerged and ended roughly at the same time as the Portuguese Golden Generation. Only they had perhaps even more potential, an even more balanced and talented team, and a more attractive playing style. Nobody expected the Czechs to do anything at Euro '96, yet they played all the way till the first-ever Golden Goal in the final. It brought stardom to youngsters Nedved and Poborsky, and as more experienced guys like Pavel Kuka were on their way out, more talent found its way to this team. Euro 2004 was theirs to lose, which they did when they ran into the boring-as-Hell Greeks in the semi-final. By then, it was practically Nedved's team, and he was one of Europe's best players at the time. They showed off a physically dominant attack with Jan Koller and Milan Baros, but in the end it wasn't enough, and the team flamed out shortly thereafter.

8: The Impossible Dream. Bulgaria 1994
The 1994 World Cup was mostly a bore, and most of the good games were played between teams you'd expect to deliver a good performance. And then there were a few unexpected nuggets. I remember Romania vs. Colombia as a great game. But none of those teams was going to win the World Cup. Bulgaria was a team that played some inspired soccer, and which, thanks to Yordan Letchkov's header, suddenly found themselves in the semi-final. They did the impossible and eliminated Germany. Hristo Stoichkov was one of Europe's best strikers, and this was just before he went back to just being a poser with a bad temper. But Bulgaria lost in the semi-final, and practically conceded third-place honors to Sweden. Of all the countries on this list, this might be the country least likely to ever field a team this good again.

7: Yugoslavia. 1990-1991 and onwards
Okay, 'Yugoslavia' isn't likely to ever field any team again. But remember how much talent they had? Davor Suker couldn't make this team before Croatia became its own country. Then he became World Cup top scorer. The striker position in Yugoslavia's team was occupied by one Darko Pancev. The Yugoslavs eliminated Denmark in the Euro '92 qualifiers before being disqualified. Denmark went on to win. The mere names of this team - Prosinecki, Savicevic, Jugovic, Mihajlovic, etc., etc. This team certainly could have gone as far as Denmark did in Euro '92, and could have been a powerhouse in world soccer for years to come. How can we know that? Because the former Yugoslav countries all fielded very good teams afterwards. Best of them, of course, was Croatia, which could have won Euro '96 with Boban and Suker spearheading the campaign. But also Slovenia, with the brilliant Zahovic, and the Yugoslav team of Euro 2000 had amazing talent. Politics and sports do mix sometimes. This was a team on which that had a very profound effect.

6: Samba Sadness. Brazil 1982-1986
Losing at the '82 World Cup to an inspired Italian team led by hat-trick hero Paolo Rossi created a trauma in Brazilian soccer that took a most uninspired 1994 title run to get over. That had the Brazilians changing style enough to no longer be the samba ballers of the past. But they did make one more attempt with the same recipe, in 1986, where their coach took criticism for sticking with the same players as in '82. But this team was good. And it played attractive, old-scool soccer. Its names are legendary to this date - Socrates, Eder, Careca, Zico. It's really too bad it never took home the big prize. Its final stand was an absolutely magnificent game against France which went to penalty shootout. That game remains a classic, and so does this team.

5: The Magic Nights of Toto Schillaci. Italy, 1988-1990
The nickname refers to Italy's World Cup run on home turf in 1990, but in fact this team had been building up since Euro '88, where it made an impressive performance with some young and energetic players. It was an exquisitely versatile team, which mastered both shut-down defense, with goalkeeper Zenga and stoppers Vierchovod, Bergomi, Baresi and Maldini, control of the midfield with Fuser, Giannini, Donadoni and Ancelotti. Up front it had such world-class strikers as Gianluca Vialli and Aldo Serena. And then, of course, that very strange man, Salvatore 'Toto' Schillaci, who came out of nowhere to score most of Italy's goals in the '90 World Cup. Six of them, anyway, to take the Golden Boot. Plus, when he felt like playing well, Roberto Baggio, at one position or another. This team conceded no goals in regular playing time during that World Cup, which remains a record for a team playing the maximum number of games. It took third place in a tournament it should have won, and probably would have, if not for one particularly unfortunate penalty shootout.

4: Danish Dynamite. 1983-1986
I must admit to being partisan to this team, of course, so I've taken great care not to place it too high. The Dynamite team was born at Wembley, 1983, when it took a sensational win, and it met its de facto Waterloo in Querétaro against Spain. Denmark, or any other Scandinavian country, will never field a team this talented and experienced again. Most of the players had prominent roles with significant European clubs, notably FC Bayern, Anderlecht and PSV, and its only real weakness was its goalkeepers (Peter Schmeichel didn't emerge until 1988). Stacked with world-class defenders (Morten Olsen, Busk, Ivan Nielsen), midfielders (Lerby, Arnesen, Bertelsen, Jesper Olsen) and strikers (Laudrup and Elkjær), this team gave the soccer world some fantastic experiences during the 80's, and should have gone much further in the '86 World Cup. That game is one I love to discuss, but it's for a future blog post. And a previous one, of course.
Euro '88 should have been the final hurrah for this team, but it wasn't. It just wasn't. It got sent home after the group stage with zero points, and that was the end of the Dynamite era. That era should have brought at least one title, but Denmark didn't win until it had a completely new, and significantly less exciting, team in '92.

3: In the End, the Germans Lose. 2006-2012
I really love watching this team too, and it of course sets itself apart by not being dismantled yet. It could still win something. Yet this is an odd mirror-image version of the In the End, the Germans Win team of the 80's and 90's. The Germans played inspired soccer on their home turf in the '06 World Cup, went all the way to the final of Euro '08 and was absolutely brilliant at the 2010 World Cup. That particular team might have been the best ever at a finals tournament to not even reach the final game. The core of FC Bayern players are fantastic ballplayers (Schweinsteiger, Müller) and deadly strikers (Klose, Gomez), and the defense isn't bad either. But this team just hasn't had the ability to close the deal as yet. There's always an extra time that goes wrong ('06 World Cup), meeting a cynical yet effective and strong opponent ('10 World Cup), or having the worst game of the tournament when it matters the most - and running into an opposing star's career day ('12 Euro). To top that off, most of the German players have lost two Champions League-finals against the Mourinhoball Inter (2010) and in a penalty shootout against the - oh yes - Mourinhoball Chelsea!
Whereas the 80's and 90's German team was somewhat conservative and boke creative teams' hearts - this certainly appears to be a creative German team that's gotten used to getting its heart broken.

2: The Mighty Magyars, 1954
Soccer was volatile back then. I've said it a bunch of times. But his Hungarian team was - according to its Wikipedia page - the founding of the modern soccer team. Several ideas were born with this team: tactical formations, systems of attacking, and the idea, which would later develop into Total Football, that any player could play any position on the field. Ferenc Puskas was the star, but this really was a group effort that took the Hungarians all the way to the 1954 World Cup final - the Battle of Berne. Back then, their opponents, the West Germans, were the underdogs, so when they beat the Mighty Magyars, it was dubbed 'Das Wunder von Bern' in West Germany. Puskas kept on dominating Spanish soccer, but Hungary as a team never made it this far again. Like Bulgaria, it's doubtful we'll once again see Hungary on the big stage, but the legacy of this team lives on.

1: Total Football, 1974-1978
Two World Cup finals, one national trauma which lasted all the way until Euro '88. The master mind behind the Dutch's dynamic style of play was as much the star, Johan Cruyff, as it was the coach Rinus Michels - who was also responsible for ending the trauma as the Netherlands' coach in '88.
To this day, not many people actually know what Total Football, the style introduced by the '74 Holland team, means as a strategy. It might have been more of a way to organize a team. It might have had more to do with pace and skill than strategy. An attractive way to play the game. What Ruud Gullit, in 1988, called 'sexy football'. Cruyff himself hasn't clarified matters much with his many tautologies and clichés. Everybody wants to say they play Total Football. The Spanish tiki-taka is said to be derived from Total Football via Cruyff's influence on Spanish soccer. Maybe Louis van Gaal's peculiar style, displayed by Ajax and FC Bayern, is Total Football. Maybe it isn't. But no matter what, there's no denying that this team revolutionized modern soccer, and that it certainly is the best team to never win anything.