Many of us have been looking forward to this years European Championship, since European club competitions and domestic leagues have come to a pause. Spain, Germany, Netherlands and France came into the competition as favourites to win the cup. Nevertheless, we expected teams like Russia, or the two host nations, Poland and Ukraine, to be in for a surprise as well.
Unfortunately, some key players in the likes of Carles Puyol and David Villa for Spain, Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard and Gareth Barry for England, as well as Domenico Criscito and Giuseppe Rossi for Italy, among others, will all miss the Euro 2012 due to numerous reasons. The most disturbing of these is another huge corruption and bribery case due to a new betting scandal in Italy. It will be interesting to see how this will affect the squadra azzurra during the competition. So far, they performed remarkably well, considering the circumstances.
But it was not just Italy in the spotlight of the media before the start of the competition. Certain racism and fascism allegations made the headlines in numerous western European countries, claiming so-called ultras in Poland and Ukraine depict a serious problem and potential threat to tourists visiting the two nations during the sports event. Furthermore, politics also got into the way of a clean start, as big-name politicians in the likes of Angela Merkel as well as the entire French government decided to boycott the matches taking place within the Ukraine. This is due to the political situation concerning the former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and the conditions of her prison arrest. Animal cruelty also played a huge part for many tourists deciding not to visit the Ukraine, as a large number of stray dogs were brutally killed off by the government, allegedly. Photos of the extermination have been posted across many social networking sites like Facebook for example. However, the authenticity of these photos should be viewed with a certain amount of objective skepticism.
But let’s leave politics and related topics off the football pitch and get back to the sports part. The group stage is now over and half of the teams progressed to the quarter-finals, the other half had to go home. Let’s have a look at each group individually.
Group A:
Host nation Poland was in with Greece, Russia and the Czech Republic for some interesting football. Poland played quite well and tried very hard to get to the quarter-finals, but in the end they were unlucky. Russia started quite strongly, beating the Czech Republic by 4:1 on the very first match day. Greece on the other hand already seemed to be out of the competition after losing 1:2 to the Czechs and facing Russia on the last match day, people did not really expect the Greeks to come home with anything but a loss. But we were all in for a surprise, as the Czech Republic finished as group winners and Greece managed to beat the Russians in an intense match to progress to the quarter-finals.
Group B:
This group was named this years group of death by the press. And they had every reason to call it that: Netherlands, Germany, Portugal and Denmark faced each other in this face-off among European heavyweights. The big surprise: the Dutch sucked! They lost all three matches and went on home with no points and only two goals scored. The Netherlands have never been this bad in the European Cup. The second surprise was Denmark. They played some pretty solid football with great team spirit and made the Germans tremble in the last match of the group stage. Still, Germany went on to the quarter-finals with a pretty solid performance overall, as well as Portugal, who managed to beat the poor Dutchmen with a 2:1 win.
Group C:
Spain and Italy. The last two world champions in one group. It really sounds to good to be true. And it sort of was. The other two teams they faced in this group were the Irish and Croatia. Spain and Italy were a rather big disappointment in the opening match of group C, as they only managed a 1:1 draw and neither side managed to dominate the match. On the other side, one can applaud Italy for playing quite well, considering they are handicapped due to the scandal. The Irish tried their best under coach Trapattoni, but in the end they did not stand a chance against the other teams. Their fans did not know how to support their team, you’ll have to give them that, as the Irish singing in the football stadiums is always lovely. Croatia nearly managed to cause an upset, as they would have kicked out Spain if they had won the last match. Nevertheless, Croatia showed a solid performance in all three matches.
Group D:
Ukraine, Sweden, France and England complete this years competitors for the Euro 2012. Andriy Shevchenko made Ukraine, the second host nation, shine and nearly managed to get his side through to the quarter-finals, if it wasn’t for England winning with a Wayne Rooney goal and a “Wembley goal” denied by the referee in the last match. France and England were expected to get through to the quarter-finals and they did, but it was a close call. France lost their last match against Sweden by 2:0 and overall, the Swedes showed us some pretty good football.
Now, the quarter-finals start on Thursday, June 21st. Some interesting fixtures are included and will bring us some impressive football, hopefully:
Czech Republic – Portugal
Germany – Greece
Spain – France
England – Italy
My personal tip for the final is Germany vs. Spain, but somehow I see Spain as the winners in that match, considering the last two meetings of the teams all went in Spain’s favour…
Let’s see how it will work out 😉
The Germafrican 