This is the first time the tiki taka was played to its fullest, spain simply grew stronger as the young less experienced players gained confidence in themselves and in the team. Germany was dominant as usual with the german style consolidated by a mix breed between the old and new payers.
The 2008 UEFA European Championship, commonly referred to as Euro 2008, was the 13th UEFA European Championship, a quadrennial football tournament contested by the European men's national teams. It took place in Austria and Switzerland from 7 to 29 June 2008.
Since the expansion of the final tournament in 1996 to sixteen teams, only two teams have managed to win the European Championship while not qualifying for the World Cup in the same year - Denmark in 1992 and Greece in 2004. Conversely, no team has managed to qualify for the World Cup while failing to qualify for the European Championship.
The format of the competition was changed for Euro 2008, with the final tournament expanded from sixteen to twenty-four teams. The team format was changed from that used in the 2006 FIFA World Cup, with the sixteen teams split into four groups of four instead of the traditional group of six format used in past World Cups and European Championships. The top two teams in each group advanced to the knockout stage, where the winners of each group played the runners-up of a different group in the quarter-finals. The knockout stage was played in a new format, with the quarter-finals and semi-finals played as two-legged home-and-away ties and the final played as a single match at a neutral venue.
