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The Austria/Switzerland bid is the second successful joint bid in the competition's history, following the [[UEFA Euro 2000]] hosted by Belgium and the Netherlands. The [[UEFA Euro 2012|following tournament]], held in Poland and Ukraine, became the third jointly hosted tournament.
==Summaryविवरण==
[[UEFA Euro 2008 qualifying|Qualification]] for Euro 2008 started in August 2006, just over a month after the end of the [[2006 FIFA World Cup]]. The qualifying tournament was contested by national teams from each of [[UEFA]]'s member associations, with the exceptions of [[Austria national football team|Austria]] and [[Switzerland national football team|Switzerland]], who had automatically qualified for the finals tournament as hosts and [[Montenegro national football team|Montenegro]], who came into existence too late to be admitted to UEFA. [[England national football team|England]] was the only seeded team not to qualify for the tournament proper, whereas [[Russia national football team|Russia]] was the only unseeded one to qualify.
[[File:Celebracion Eurocopa 1.jpg|thumb|287px|left|विजेता स्पेनी टिमको एक भव्य स्वागत समारोह]]
The draw for the finals tournament took place on 2 December 2007, and saw [[UEFA Euro 2008 Group C|Group C]] immediately labelled as the "[[group of death]]", with [[Italy national football team|Italy]], [[France national football team|France]], [[Romania national football team|Romania]] and the [[Netherlands national football team|Netherlands]] competing for the two qualifying places. In contrast, [[Germany national football team|Germany]] and [[Portugal national football team|Portugal]] were deemed to have an easy draw, as the tournament structure meant they could not meet Italy, France, the Netherlands or [[Spain national football team|Spain]] until the final.
[[File:Euro 2008.png|thumb|311px|सहभागी राष्ट्र]]
In the group stage, [[Croatia national football team|Croatia]], Spain and the Netherlands all qualified with maximum points. Austria and Switzerland were not expected to progress, despite the advantage of being the hosts. In [[UEFA Euro 2008 Group A|Group A]], the Swiss lost their captain, [[Alexander Frei]], to injury in their first game and became the first team to be eliminated from the tournament, after losing their first two matches. Switzerland managed to beat the group winner Portugal in their last game.
</ref> and Spain were crowned UEFA Euro 2008 champions.
In [[UEFA Euro 2008 Group B|Group B]], Austria managed to set up a decisive final game against Germany, dubbed "Austria's final".<ref>{{cite news |title=Germany Advances to Euro 2008 Quarterfinals |publisher=WSN |date=16 June 2008 |accessdate=17 March 2009 |url=http://www.wsn.com/2008/06/16/football/news/2008-european-championship/germany-advances-to-euro-2008-quarterfinals_343529/}}</ref> However, they lost by one goal, making Euro 2008 the first European Championship not to have one of the host nations present in the knockout phase. In an exciting final game in Group A, an injury- and suspension-hit [[Turkey national football team|Turkey]] came back from 2–0 down to beat the [[Czech Republic national football team|Czech Republic]] 3–2, after an uncharacteristic handling mistake by [[Petr Čech]], in the last few minutes, left [[Nihat Kahveci]] with the simplest of finishes.
In the same game, goalkeeper [[Volkan Demirel]] was shown a red card for pushing Czech striker [[Jan Koller]] to the ground. The Turks joined Portugal as the qualifiers from Group A. France were the high-profile victims of Group C, recording just one point from a goalless draw against Romania in their opening game. Italy beat the French, on the final day, to finish on four points and joining the Netherlands in the quarter-finals. Finally, in [[UEFA Euro 2008 Group D|Group D]], [[Greece national football team|Greece]] failed to reproduce the form of their shock [[UEFA Euro 2004|2004 win]], and ended the tournament with no points. Russia qualified at the expense of [[Sweden national football team|Sweden]], after beating them in a final game decider, joining Spain in the knockout phase.
In the quarter-finals, the Portuguese team was unable to give their coach, [[Luiz Felipe Scolari]], a fitting send-off – following the mid-tournament announcement that Scolari would be leaving to join English club [[Chelsea F.C.|Chelsea]] – losing in an exciting game against Germany. Turkey continued their streak of last-gasp wins, equalising at the end of extra-time against Croatia and advancing on penalties. Coached by Dutchman [[Guus Hiddink]], Russia eliminated the Netherlands with two extra-time goals. The last quarter-final match saw Spain defeat Italy on penalties, after a goalless draw in regular time.
[[File:Celebracion Eurocopa 1.jpg|thumb|287px|left|The Spanish football team touring Madrid as champions]]
Turkey's progress was halted by Germany in the semi-finals. Turkey entered the game with nine of their squad members missing due to injury or suspension, but still scored the first goal. Later, they leveled the score at 2–2, before Germany scored the winning goal in the final minute. The world television feed of the match was intermittently lost during the match, which prevented the broadcast of Germany's second goal.
[[File:Euro 2008.png|thumb|311px|Performance of the participating countries during Euro 2008]]
This was due to a thunderstorm at the broadcasting relay station in Austria, despite the game being played in Switzerland. Swiss Television [[SRG SSR]] still had a feed, because of their own broadcasting facilities at the venue. During the lost world feed German and Austrian television [[ZDF]] and [[ORF (broadcaster)|ORF]] started to broadcast the feed of German speaking Swiss channel [[SRF 1|SF 1]].
This act ensured that the German goal was actually broadcast in Germany although not in Turkey.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.spiegel.de/sport/fussball/tv-signal-weg-zdf-zuernt-wegen-stromausfall-panne-a-562121.html |title=TV-Signal weg |accessdate=26 May 2013 |date=25 June 2008 |publisher=spiegel.de }}</ref> Spain won the second semi-final against Russia by three goals to nil, through second-half goals from [[Xavi]], [[Daniel Güiza]] and [[David Silva]], earning Spain their first appearance in a major final for 24 years.
In the final, held at [[Vienna]]'s [[Ernst-Happel-Stadion]], Spain became European champions for the second time after [[Fernando Torres]]' first-half goal proved enough to defeat Germany. Though Germany had a strong start, Spain started to look more dangerous after they had settled.
After half an hour, Xavi played a pass in behind the Germany back line towards Torres, who outmuscled a hesitant [[Philipp Lahm]] and clipped the ball over the diving [[Jens Lehmann]] and just inside the far post. That goal proved to be the only goal of the game, which Spain dominated despite Germany having the majority of the possession,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.euro2008.uefa.com/tournament/matches/match=301696/statistics/index.html |title=Match statistics |accessdate=30 June 2008 |date=29 June 2008 |publisher=euro2008.uefa.com }}</ref> and Spain were crowned UEFA Euro 2008 champions.
==Venues==
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