THE MIDDLE THIRD:LIKE EVERYBODY else, I've been watching plenty of the European Championships over the past few weeks. It's been highly enjoyable – the Irish games apart, obviously – and in watching the likes of Spain, Germany and Italy, it's been clear that what goes into making a successful team at the highest level doesn't change significantly from sport to sport.

If there’s one word to sum it up, it’s “sacrifice”. The individual takes the back seat so that the team prospers.

You would think after he scored his two goals against Ireland last Thursday Fernando Torres would have been untouchable for Spain in their next match against Croatia. Yet when it came time for Spain to make a change as the game stood at 0-0 on Monday night, Torres was the first one to go. He would have been annoyed about it but there was no kicking bottles or sulking or giving out.

By the end of the game, it was his replacement Jesus Navas who scored the winner to make sure Spain went through.

Contrast that with Arjen Robben’s reaction when he was taken off for the Netherlands against Germany last week. He was so put out when he saw his number come up he wouldn’t even run across the width of the pitch to leave the field and instead he just walked off on the side he was standing and made a big show of climbing across the advertising hoarding with a scowl on his face.

It’s no coincidence that heading into the quarter-finals, Spain topped their group and the Netherlands have gone home.

Anyone who watched Donegal last Saturday night saw a team that is totally faithful to the cause throughout the team, with players who are prepared for sacrifice. They aren’t getting involved with their own petty concerns, they’re doing exactly what their team needs them to do. Any team that can keep that togetherness going will be around for a long time.

Here’s an example. One of the things that struck me watching them was that Neil McGee and Karl Lacey both came up from the defence to take shots at goal during the match but, as far as I could make out, the centre half-forward Mark McHugh never had a kick at the posts. Now this is interesting, not so much because the defenders were going for scores – that’s obviously one of the tactics Jimmy McGuinness will employ as he gets his team to evolve – but more so for the attitude of a player like McHugh in that situation.

Think about it. He’s a player who has come up through the ranks at his club as a promising forward, who would have been used to getting his three or four points a game. If he had any ego at all, he’d be looking to get forward into scoring position and to get his name up in lights. But not only did he not take a shot on Saturday, he never looked like making a shape at taking one. He was content just to be a cog in the wheel, doing his bit to sit in front of his full-back line and work and tackle. That’s what you want from everyone, that sacrifice for the team, that devotion to the cause.

It’s hard to get that out of fellas. All players like to think well of themselves. They hate to concede ground or to go through a game without showing off what they’re good at. When I was playing, if I was up against a guy who was beating me in the air and taking a few catches, it was an awful comedown for me to have to start breaking the ball away from him.

I felt it was conceding defeat, admitting that I was being outplayed.

But of course the best thing for the team was for me to stop the opposition and prevent my man catching ball. So eventually I would start breaking it and slapping it away, fighting the natural urge to keep going for big catches.

That’s what I found so impressive about Donegal. They’re obviously sacrificing themselves and buying into the big picture. They’re doing it after a winter where the manager got rid of Kevin Cassidy – who was bound to have been popular with some of the players – yet there doesn’t seem to have been any spillover there. Nothing is being allowed to detract from the cause.

In football terms, they’re definitely further down the road than they were this time last year.

Obviously they’re still going to be hard to break down but they’re moving their game on as well. Michael Murphy and Paddy McBrearty are very good footballers in roles that suit them because they’re super kickers of the ball. Their ability to find Colm McFadden will be a big factor in how far Donegal go.

But the point about them is they are more than a team with a few players who stand out. They are a group who have a system that they know and that they’re comfortable with. They’re in their second season of it and the more you play within a system that works, the more it becomes familiar and enjoyable.

I would say it’s actually nearly easier for some of these fellas to play with their county than to play with their club at this stage because they more or less know exactly what the guy next to them is going to do, both when he has the ball and when he hasn’t. That understanding fuels every good team.

You can see that they’re enjoying it now. They have that sharpness that’s a feature of a team who know things are going well. We’ve seen it in Donegal, we’ve seen it in Dublin. Okay, the opposition might not have been very good in either case but these are teams who are playing with the sort of pace and accuracy that comes when a team is together and is playing to a set plan.

I wrote enough about Kerry last week to do me for a while but one of the things that made me a bit worried for them was a kick pass that Eoin Brosnan hit to Paul Galvin against Cork. Where Dublin and Donegal are kicking these balls directly into fellas’ chests, this pass from Eoin bounced three times before it got to Galvin. That’s not because Eoin’s a poor kicker of a ball – he isn’t at all – it’s because there was a sharpness lacking in Kerry’s play. The more you buy into the cause, the tighter you are as a team, the quicker and more accurate those kick passes become.

Donegal have it, Dublin have it, Kildare have it. Kerry don’t yet.

Donegal are genuine contenders this year. They should beat Tyrone in Ulster because they have a harder edge to them and although Tyrone played very well against Armagh, they’re just missing too much talent.

Even though Mickey Harte has been there for nine years, they’re at an earlier stage in their development so I expect Donegal to beat them. That will put them into an Ulster final having come through the harder side of the draw and I don’t see Monaghan or Down troubling them.

After that, they’re a serious force. Very few teams are as hard to play against and they’re making the right decisions on the ball when they have it. They’re one of the more efficient teams when it comes to keeping the ball and moving it at pace. They have a very professional approach in that they’ve all got jobs to do and roles to play and they look very comfortable doing it.

They actually look far more comfortable in their roles than some of the Cork players.

Cork are obviously very disciplined and it served them very well against Kerry but I don’t think they look as happy in some of the things they’re having to do as Donegal are. They strike me as a team who would like to kick the ball a bit more and not get bogged down so much in lateral hand-passing. I could be wrong in that but I just get the feeling some of the Cork players would like a bit more of a direct game plan. That might be the little hurdle that trips them up.

Team sport is about making each passage of play that bit easier for the next guy along. The best teams in the Euros have it right and it’s beginning to look a lot like Donegal have it right as well. When you get a team like that, which doesn’t care who does what as long as the result goes their way in the end, you have to sit up and take notice of them.

Dublin, Donegal, Cork, Kildare all play different brands of football but the one thing that shines through from all of them is the effort and sacrifice they’re putting in.

That’s why they’re the top teams in the country right now.