Group B

It is the curtain-raiser to all major tournaments. Which goalkeeper will complain first about the aerodynamics of the ball? Launched by manufacturers claiming a design rounder, better-looking and more ecologically friendly than any football ever produced, the pre-publicity for the official ball gets fired off months before the event. Then, about 10 days before the opening fixture, a goalkeeper shrieks that it flies through the air about as predictably as an intoxicated Buzz Lightyear.

First on the podium ahead of Euro 2008 was Germany’s Jens Lehmann. The former Arsenal No 1 has complained of difficulties handling and anticipating the “Europass”, a statement causing some red faces at the German federation, given that his national team are sponsored by the ball’s makers. Lehmann said he found the ball “difficult” after Germany’s preparatory match against Belarus in Kaiserslautern last week.

He stopped short of details, beyond noting how its movements had been hard to anticipate and did not quite add that it becomes still more elusive in the second 45 minutes. Germany had led the Belarussians by a comfortable 2-0 at half-time. It finished 2-2.

Hence the anxious self-analysis that has led some Germans to wonder how far the most impressive qualifying campaign of all the Euro 2008 contenders had flattered them. Lehmann had gone seven hours of international football keeping out shots made with old-fashioned footballs until last Tuesday’s friendly. The result left his coach, Joachim Loew, obliged to answer queries about his 38-year-old goalkeeper by noting “clearly he needs match practice”. Much the same could be said all along the spine of the German first XI.

Lehmann played six Premier League matches for Arsenal last season, and handled his demotion to second-choice, behind Manuel Almunia, in much the way he used to deal with being reserve keeper for Germany, behind Oliver Kahn: with very little stoicism, periodically wondering out loud how on earth the other man had been preferred.

Lehmann’s status as German No 1, established just before the 2006 World Cup, has not suffered over a testing final year with Arsenal, although that was in part because his closest competitor, Timo Hildebrand, was having almost as awful a time at Valencia.

Hildebrand did not make Loew’s squad for Euro 2008. Lehmann’s back-up, Robert Enke and Rene Adler, have one cap between them, and Germany’s entire defence had wobbled against Belarus. Christoph Metzelder, the shorter of the twin towers — Metzelder stands 6ft 4in; Per Mertesacker is 6ft 6in — at centre-half, needs match practice, too. He started seven Spanish league games for Real Madrid this season. Some of those absences were down to injury, but at no point had he displaced either Fabio Cannavaro or Pepe as first-choice for Madrid. Metzelder will be first-pick for Germany, though.

In front of Metzelder, the industrious midfielder Torsten Frings missed two-thirds of the Bundesliga campaign with fitness problems and the pair of strikers who lined up in Kaiserslautern last week, Miroslav Klose and Lukas Podolski, are club colleagues at Bayern Munich, where Klose usually starts — Podolski usually does not. He began only eight matches on the way to Bayern’s league title.

But to say this is a rag-tag Germany made up of substitutes from better teams would be to exaggerate. Their finest player — Michael Ballack — can barely have been in better form than his past six months with Chelsea. Though he was bound to feel some fatigue last week after the draining experience of Moscow and a second losing Champions League final of his career, Ballack should be a totem for Germany. In the absence of the injured Bernd Schneider, he is the senior outfield player by a distance.

The concern is that beyond the trusted leaders, Loew, like his predecessor Jurgen Klinsmann, has a clear and uncomfortable sense of how shallow his resources run. Up front, in support of the effective Klose, the eager Podolski and Mario Gomez, a 22-year-old goalscorer from Stuttgart, Loew has recalled Oliver Neuville, who is 35. Neuville managed a respectable 15 goals for his club, Borussia Moenchen- gladbach over the season — all of them in the second division.

The bookmakers have been unperturbed by these signs of rust beneath a polished veneer of the most rapid progress through the hurdle of qualifying in history. Germany achieved their place in the championships after a mere 237 days, apparently the fastest-ever. They saw off the challenge of Ireland, Wales and the Czech Republic. Come the finals, Croatia shape up as Group B’s biggest obstacle, with Poland and Austria making up what looks perhaps the gentlest of the first-round pools.

As for Loew, if he was not such a snappy dresser, you’d say he still has the cut of Klinsmann’s sidekick. Loew knows reaching the semi-finals in 2006 is a hard act to follow, and Germany’s last dozen years have followed a path of highs and dips as erratic as Lehmann imagines the Europass ball can be. They were European champions in 1996, and turned into weary, wheezing veterans at the France World Cup. At Euro 2000, a nadir would be widely declared: Germany finished bottom of a group including Kevin Keegan’s England, their head coach having memorably identified a grave athletic deficit — “they dance like refrigerators,” said Erich Ribbeck. Come the next World Cup, these non-jiving iceboxes would reach the final.

By Euro 2004, the Germans were back in the doldrums, out in the first round. So Klinsmann was enticed from California, and hosting the World Cup had a genuinely heady effect. It boosted the Bundesliga, too, although not in all the ways Loew would like to see.

No domestic league will have more players at Euro 2008 than Germany’s and when the German head coach follows it, he watches some exciting footballers . . . from Brazil, France and Eastern Europe. And when Loew checks on those Germans who have moved to leading clubs abroad, he too often sees them sitting, like Lehmann at Arsenal, on the bench, grumbling.

Austria head for quick exit

Austria are 101st in the Fifa world rankings. Even co-hosts Switzerland make the world’s top 50, sneaking in at 48

The only time a host nation failed to get past the group stage was Belgium in 2000

Austria have yet to qualify for the Euro final stages, reaching a nadir in 1990 when they lost 1-0 against the Faroe Islands. Last year, a public petition to withdraw for fear of humiliation received strong support

Captain Andreas Ivanschitz, of Panathinaikos, is Austria’s best player but there are few stars at top teams outside the country. Goalkeeper Alex Manninger, once of Arsenal, and Middlesbrough defender Emanuel Pogatetz are familiar faces but neither is top quality

The 5-1 thrashing of Malta last week won’t fool anyone. Beating Poland is the limit of their ambitions