Sports Calendar

And so it remained until the 79th minute, when an unspectacular high ball from Lahm was met by madness on the part of Rüstü, who charged from his line but failed to collect, allowing Miroslav Klose to score a soft header from the edge of the area.

At this point, it seemed that the match would revert to the predicted format, Turkey having fulfilled the role of plucky outsiders and Germany’s experience and supremacy beginning to show as they played out the remaining time in relative calm. Wrong. Fatih Terim, the Turkey coach who said that he will probably resign after this defeat, threw on his substitutes, upped the tempo and in the 86th minute, Sabri left Lahm for dead, crossed low, and Semih Sentürk got in ahead of Per Mertesacker, the German defender, and Lehmann, to equalise.

Lahm soon rendered the moment irrelevant, but Turkey’s immense contribution to the tournament will not be forgotten. In their own way, they gave even more than Greece, the underdogs who won in 2004.

Germany (4-2-3-1): J Lehmann — A Friedrich, P Mertesacker, C Metzelder, P Lahm — S Rolfes (sub: T Frings, 46min), T Hitzlsperger — B Schweinsteiger, M Ballack, L Podolski — M Klose (sub: M Jansen, 90). Substitutes not used: R Enke, R Adler, C Fritz, H Westermann, M Gómez, O Neuville, P Trochowski, T Borowski, D Odonkor, K Kuranyi.

Turkey (4-1-4-1): Rüstü Reçber — Sabri Sarioglu, Mehmet Topal, Gökhan Zan, Hakan Balta — Mehmet Aurélio — C Kazim-Richards (sub: Tümer Metin, 90), Hamit Altintop, Ayhan Akman (sub: Mevlüt Erdinç, 81), Ugur Boral (sub: Gökdeniz Karadeniz, 84) — Semih Sentürk. Substitutes not used: Tolga Zengin, Servet Çetin, Emre Güngör. Booked: Sentürk.

Referee: M Busacca (Switzerland).

TV hell for viewers

Three late goals brought a chaotic ending to the Euro 2008 semi-final between Germany and Turkey in Basle, but that was not the half of it for BBC One viewers. A thunderstorm in Vienna, Uefa’s broadcasting base, caused such havoc with pictures and sound that viewers missed one goal and heard another described half a second before seeing it.

Pictures were lost for two periods totalling nine minutes during the second half, while the sound switched between John Motson’s TV commentary and BBC Radio 5 Live’s description.

British viewers with a penchant for Schadenfreude will have been pleased to learn that German armchair fans failed to witness Miroslav Klose’s 79th-minute goal because of the problems.

When the second spell without pictures ended in the 80th minute, the radio commentary of Alan Green was half a second ahead of the action, so viewers knew Semih Senturk had equalised for Turkey in the 86th minute even before he had met Sabri Sarioglu’s cross.

A BBC spokesman said: “This was not a BBC fault. This was due to the loss of the feed provided by the host broadcaster, Uefa.”

Words by Bill Edgar