Thursday, June 12, 2008

I must confess...

Euro 2008 is a whole lot less interesting without England in there.

On the other hand, watching it is a whole lot more pleasant without the commentators and analysts constantly diverting off at tangents to talk about England's chances, to bring us the latest 'news' from the England camp, and crowing about how England were surely the favourites to win the tournament. Followed, of course, by the unpleasant sense of schaudenfruede that comes when they inevitably get knocked out by Portugal or Germany (or Argentina, in the World Cup) on penalties. (To my English readers: I'm sorry, but I really hate your presenters.)

(It's also unfortunate that Scotland aren't there. However, given that Italy and France got drawn together again, and with Holland this time, I'm not sure we would have been in it for long. And, given our qualifying group for the World Cup, the fact that Holland trouced Italy was more than a little disconcerting.)

Oh, before I go, my prediction for the tournament: although the best teams I've seen so far have been Spain and Holland (I haven't seen Portugal, but I heard they were very good yesterday), I'm going to go for Germany as the eventual winners. Spain have a habit of imploding at key points, while Holland may well find the effort involved in qualifying from an Italy/France group tires them too much for the later stages.

5 comments:

Captain Ric said...

Oh flip! I've been wanting Holland to win, but my prediction is Germany. Does that mean we're agreeing on something?

Steph/ven said...

Well, it looks like it might be the kiss of death for Germany.

Croatia were very good, though.

Captain Ric said...

Were they? I didn't see it. Anyway, there's no way Germany and Croatia aren't qualifying from that group!

Steph/ven said...

Yeah. Remember when we played Croatia, and I said it was very even, but I always got the sense that Croatia had a whole gear or two they could step up in competition?

Well, they did exactly that. Based on yesterday's performance, there's no way Scotland could have got a 1-1 draw, even at full strength.

While Germany will still almost certainly qualify from their group, coming second puts them on a collision course with a very good Portugal team in the next round. Should be an interesting match, that.

Anonymous said...

I would comment but I have nothing intelligent to say about football as I can't stand it! So glad I don't have to suffer it over here!!