posted by Baggiesboy

(This is my bad here, people. Baggiesboy sent me this on Saturday and it was meant to go up before the Euro final and I just couldn’t make it happen because the wireless was all screwy on my yacht. So make the proper allowances while reading. “There’s something wrong with me,” Sir Bag wrote to me. “I’m feeling sentimental about a German…” Sounds like a bloody mancrush to me, mate. That’s what we call the old “s-word” round these parts anyway -L)

Matt Damon look-a-like Michael Ballack has an identity crisis: to some, he’s the best midfield general of his generation, to many he’s soccer’s version of Colin Montgomerie, the best European player never to win a major title? On Sunday, provided he’s healthy after pulling up lame in training on Friday, the German captain will get one more chance to lay claim to the former, rather than the latter, as his legacy.

Like his celluloid doppelgänger Jason Bourne, the East German-born Ballack is a product of the post-Cold War age, and has traveled through many countries to reach the latest climax of his saga. At Euro 2008, that would be Poland, Croatia, Austria, Portugal, and Turkey, with Spain next on the continental crisscrossing agenda.

As with most Bourne movies, Ballack seemed a bit out of sorts as he started his Euro quest. Against the Poles, he needed a young blonde assistant to step up at a key time (think of Lukas Podolski as Julia Stiles with a bad haircut and wicked left foot.) With Croatia, the plot turned really messy: bodies strewn all over the field, and a young henchman losing control (at the risk of mixing movie metaphors does anyone know a casting director with Dolph Lundgren’s cell phone number? If he can’t be found to play Bastian Schweinsteiger, then Brigitte Nielsen is the only other option: which would be a rocky choice to say the least.) But this is where our armband bedecked hero earned his popcorn.

In one of the smartest moves of the tournament, after the defeat by Croatia, the Chelsea man called a players only meeting and laid down the Ballack ultimatum. He wanted more commitment from his teammates and no more Fräulein WAGs in the tabloids. Yes, like that other terrible British soccer disease, hooliganism, WAGs have crossed the English Channel as well. I know of very few people outraged by German supermodels, but reportedly Herr Ballack is one of them.

Germany’s Number 13 doesn’t believe in luck. He’s all about laser focus. That intensity was on display against Austria where his game winning free-kick strike nearly decapitated the net. At this point, Ballack opened up communications with management. No roof-top, high-tech wizardry for him though, just a face-to-face conversation with head coach Joachim Löw about changing Germany’s formation to give the skipper more room to roam and inflict his unique brand of damage against Portugal. (Joan Allen with trim, black hair is an adidas shoe-in for the Löw role by the way.)

Needless to say, Portugal was dispatched in clinical fashion. Which is a lot more than can be said about the Turks. A good thriller requires an unexpected plot twist, but when Turkey sliced up the German defense in the game’s first 20 minutes: well, suddenly the entire Mannschaft had an identity crisis. The power surge seemed over, but then lightening struck. While few of us were watching (well, plenty of us were watching the blank screen: which proves that when a TV falls in the forest every viewer sees the crash), Miroslav Klose headed in a seeming winner past the rusty Rustu. It seemed normal service was resumed with that goal (but then the pictures vanished again, and Turkey tied the game.) Fuzzy pictures, white snow, and satellite surveillance interference are fixtures in the Bourne oeuvre, so the chaos wasn’t anything the Deutschland dynamo couldn’t handle (even if the UEFA host broadcaster couldn’t), and another faithful sidekick, this time Philip Lahm, kicked up the drama with a late, later winner.

Just because you didn’t see it, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. Which is how all those dead assassins left in Bourne’s wake must feel. But now the finale is at hand. Spain is a formidable foe (Brian Cox plays Luis Aragones), and if Ballack wants to come in from the cold he will have to be at his brilliant best. When he had his shot at World Cup glory in 2002, the dreaded second yellow card felled his hopes. Hopefully a cranky calf muscle won’t keep him off the field on Sunday. Should he play against Spain, he can take heart from another Bourne connection.

It turns out that Jason Bourne is really David Webb. And as any real Chelsea fan will tell you, that is the identity of the Stamford Bridge folk hero whose goal won the 1970 F.A. Cup final replay against Leeds United. Perhaps that is an omen for current Chelsea superhero Michael Ballack. Wouldn’t it be fitting on Sunday in Vienna, one of the espionage capitals of the world, that Ballack established his true identity by producing a match winning performance forever branded as the Ballack supremacy?