大象传媒

Vienna

Much as the Dutch, Turks, Russians and co have lit up Euro 2008, the ingredients for Sunday's final are close to perfect in TV terms.

OK, so the audience would be bigger if one of the home nations had somehow made it. However, in all honesty, this tournament really hasn't missed us. The football has largely been glorious - eight goals in two semis, with no extra-time or penalties, is not the norm in modern tournament football.

The TV audience figures in the United Kingdom would suggest that any football fan who may have been sulking at the prospect of watching 16 teams from continental mainland battle it out has long since seen the error of their ways and joined the party.

And a has all the ingredients to make a compelling watch.

If you were a visitor from outer space, you'd say Spain were big favourites. They may actually be even stronger if misses out because of injury and Cesc Fabregas becomes the fifth member of a glorious midfield quintet. They've also looked pretty solid at the back, with a great keeper, Iker Casillas, and a collective nerve which has so far held firm, notably in that marathon quarter-final against Italy.

By contrast, Germany, for the second tournament running, have been anything but the dourly efficient outfit of traditional cliche. They've scored plenty of goals and have reached the final despite conceding two goals in three games. It really should have been several more than two in the .

However, this final isn't Team X v Team Y. It's Germany, with a history of odds-defying wins dating back to the 1954 "", against Spain, with an almost equally long tradition of cruel tournament exits. No-one can call this final with any certainty.

One factor we hope won't inflluence events too much is the weather. I was in our Vienna studio on Wednesday night with a perfect view of the most extraordinary electric storm any of us have ever witnessed. As most of you will know, the as a result, which meant most of the world's television coverage was affected.

Though 大象传媒 One lost pictures for several minutes and the gallery and videotape area here was plunged into darkness, our engineering team worked frantically in unprecedented circumstances to reroute pictures direct from Basel to London.

Tony Bate, our lead engineer, has worked at the big sporting events for nearly three decades and said he'd never experienced anything like it. Those of us in production were, even more than usual, eternally grateful for the skill and expertise of Tony's team.

Other stations elsewhere - not to mention the Fanzones - lost almost the whole of the second half. In fact, one thought the game had finished 2-2 at full-time because Miroslav Klose's goal to make it 2-1 had been missed! In one Scandinavian country, second-half coverage amounted to a screen with an apology on it and a mobile phone commentary.

At least we had pictures for most of the key moments while our TV and Radio 5 Live commentary teans made some kind of sense of a dramatic evening. We also had a particularly memorable live link with a half-drowned Jake Humphrey outside the VIenna Fanzone just after the match had finished.

It's still humid and potentially stormy here in Vienna at the moment, but we're sincerely hoping that any electricity and drama on Sunday is confined entirely to the field of play.