After defeats in Charleroi, Belgium, and Rotterdam, it's bye-bye to England and auf Wiedersehen to Germany. This reporter failed to see either at the Feyenoord Stadium. As other players confessed, Germany lay down to defeat without spirit, without apparent pride in a legacy in which no German team had previously failed to win at least one game at a major tournament over the past 62 years. Khan, who calls himself the best goalkeeper in Germany and among the finest in the world, symbolized the ignominy when, on hands and knees, he allowed the second of Sergio Conceicao's three goals to trickle past him. This was the fall of a soccer empire.
Some English observers claim it was the fall of two, but that is an analogy too far.
Brazil will come again, but unless Germany rediscovers the kindergarten of grooming young players and of modernizing its geriatric game, others must carry the mantle for Europe. France could, of course, and the Netherlands if it can make 11 talented individuals like one another. That comparatively small cousin to Brazil has brought to Euro 2000 enough skill from its ''golden generation'' to fill two teams. He realizes he is talking about the entire squad of Portugal, born between 1969 and 1974 and raised together in a youth structure that had deep commitment to ball control and passing. How far the Portuguese go depends on whether they can summon a belief in themselves that has been shallow before.