Thanks to Sjevchenko I am not the only one in a bad mood (currently working with a bunch of Swedes and one evil Dane)

Sweden was lousy indeed, but they should have equalised in the last minutes.

England and France both succeeded to secure a draw.

Spain and Italy both failed to win.

We all prefer failure.

ENG-FRA was a bit of a sleeping pill, especially the first half - despite the goals, the tempo was too low. England's counter-attack seemed slightly sharper than France's attack, still 1-1 was a nice result for Sweden (or perhaps Ukraine).

[quote author=42617B514D776C6B7C0E0 link=1336403980/43#43 date=1339409736]
Germany and Netherlands were not very good, but I am looking forward to their game next wednesday. It will be the first heavyweight-battle with high stakes of the tourney, as Netherlands almost needs to win to stay in the tourney.
[/quote]

The group of death is full of live.

Even if NL loses against GER, they are easily still in the running if POR wins against DEN.  If DEN scores one point than the situation will certainly be bleak as even a draw between GER and NL would guarantuee the elimination of NL assuming that GER will not lose against DEN, which I find highly unlikely.

Remember, head-to-head is the tie breaker and not goal differential.

Germany is facing a different situation than in the WC or the Euro Qualifiers. POR played tactically very smart, compact and at the beginning defensively and Germany had a hard time breaking POR's defense down (at WC they played more counter attacking, see wins against ARG and ENG and once a team didn't let them counter attack, they lost against ESP). But I was positively surprised that the supposedly waekest link (i.e. the defence) was actually the strongest. I guess we are back to the old GER, scrappy wins and a typical tournament performance (start slow but go far).

Since the NL will try to win the game against GER, we should see a more dynamic game with a lot of space for both teams. Should be more exiting than the POR game.

Re the refs:

I didn't get to see the Ireland-Croatia game, but the only game that I saw that was really poorly officiated was the first one.  The Spanish ref dug his own grave in giving a yellow card for a foul that wasn't even a foul. The second yellow card against Sokratis Papastaphopoulos was more legitimate, but given that he'd already handed out a card for a non-event, he should have kept the card in his pocket the second time around. 

It wasn't the only major mistake he made, but it was the most critical one.  The focus of the game turned on the referee rather than the players. The straight red on Szczesny  was fully deserved though. 

The Dutch are becoming known as whiners. Every time they lose, they look to blame the ref. The last handball could indeed have been called as a penalty, but I fully expect Damir Skomina to get full marks by FIFA.  Overall, the game was very well officiated. The players were allowed to play and the game was decided by the players rather than the ref.

[quote author=506E6B6B626A776E62070 link=1336403980/49#49 date=1339421584][quote author=785F424C464A2B0 link=1336403980/48#48 date=1339418876][quote author=6A54515158504D54583D0 link=1336403980/41#41 date=1339406125]

PS even though they are a province of Holland, for some reason they prefer to be known as Germany.[/quote]

No, they prefer to be known as Deutschland. And AFAIK "Deutsch" is etymologically the same word as "Dutch", so paristhemagique isn't far off.

As usual, it's illogical English who creates problems, preferring for some reason to use an old Latin name for the country.[/quote]
Afaik it is similar as with Taiwan, officially it is Dutchland province of Holland, while the locals refer to it as Deutschland. 

Anyway we'll see wednesday, when Robben will miss a penalty, Van Persie blunders away 2 more sure goals and our defense is caught napping and Ozil is allowed free passage to the goal. ;)[/quote]

Sounds like you're about to change horse in the middle of the race! :) 

Btw, did anyone try to buy the team from the ad in the yellow pages? :))

Willempie wrote on 06/11/12 at 09:15:25:


No, they prefer to be known as Deutschland. And AFAIK "Deutsch" is etymologically the same word as "Dutch", so paristhemagique isn't far off.

As usual, it's illogical English who creates problems, preferring for some reason to use an old Latin name for the country.

I really enjoyed Italy (my all-time 2nd favourite team ) vs. Spain; not the kind of football you usually expect to see in such an early round.

I also liked our game with Poland, but admit I was about to break the TV at half time.. Now it will be difficult with half of our defence gone. There are also a lot of complaints about our medical team, since the injured player was left to play for 15' after his injury and now may have to stay out for 6-8 months (nobody knows whether these 15' did any harm). I am afraid this situation may affect team spirit..