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European football championships

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carlsson

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Sweden - Bulgaria 5-0! (sorry if the BBS is populated by any Bulgarian or related people)

After Italy - Denmark 0-0, it suddenly looks promising to play Italy next...
 
damn, i should have known you would have told the scores :)

i haven't watched them yet :)

i am surprised bulgaria fell apart so much, as i have heard good reports about them

typical italy with that very conservative coach they have
a shame, since they have such offensive weapons, if only they were allowed to play offensive!

i am a neutral for this tournie, so i just want good play all around!

was that eng - fra game wild or what?

chris
 
You don't have to open the thread if you're afraid it contains dangerous information. :D

Bulgaria is a typical moody team. If successful, they probably can create small wonders, but if losing the grip, they seem to let go. Yesterday we were lucky though with two goals within a minute in the middle of a period under pressure from the Bulgarian team.

Italy supposedly relaxed due to the warm weather, but I dunno... they should be more used to hot weather than more Northern teams.

I read an anecdote from China about a guy who liked to watch the European championships via satellite in the middle of the night. His wife forbid him, as he was supposed to get up in the morning and drive the kids to school, but he persisted with watching France - England at 2 AM.

The wife didn't realize this until the very last minute, when her husband "became loud" as Zinedine Zidane scored twice within a minute. She got out of bed, hit her husband in the head with the remote control and told him that she would make sure no more football was watched.

According to the anecdote, he has complained to the governing party (!) about his wife not respecting the human rights which for him includes watching football in the middle of the night. :roll: :lol:
 
I got to watch the ita - den game, and it was a lot better than i expected.
there were tons of chances for both sides.

the ger - hol game ought to be interesting, but what am i saying? all the games are interesting!

i hope that guy in china can persuade his wife to capitulate, and yes it is his God given right! :)

chris
 
Germany-Holland is said to be one of the most fierce games, based on old "traditions" like the spitting exchange in 1988. In particular now after some Dutch player brought up the WW2 and Nazi German occupation of Holland right before this game.. not the most clever way to prepare.
 
There is so much history (both soccer and non soccer related) with European countries, I guess there is bound to be some wicked rivalries. i have little knowledge about who hates who etc.. though

What an incredible goal VanNistelrooy (spelling?) got.
man that guy is good.

well, i know you are looking forward to every Sweden game, but i am looking forward to the last games of the group stage, since there should be some pretty desperate teams.

i wonder if porutgal will choke today?

chris
 
The latest news is that Totti (ITA) may face (1) a three game suspension for .. yep, spitting a Danish player in the face (2) and generally acting unbalanced in the last game. It is not yet decided, but most experts say that if UEFA doesn't suspend him for that, they will lose their face (3).

Italy of course have plenty of other top players, but one striker less should be good news for Sweden, when we face (4) them next.
 
i am looking forward to the ita - swe game, but probably not as much as you :)

i thought totti played well last game, so i think italy will miss him. totti sure has a short fuse, doesn't he? i wonder if the guy he spit on also plays for Lazio? :)

that por - esp game on saturday is going to be quite the one to watch as well i think.

the cro - fra game should be good today

chris
 
Rumors say that Italy will rebuild the team completely (even change formation to 4-4-2) rather than replacing Totti with another forward.

Yes, POR-ESP will be an important game for both teams after Greece surprisingly only has to draw an unbalanced Russian team to go through, i.e. only one of Portugal or Spain would make quarter finals unless Russia finds team morale to defeat the Greek.

I'm participating in some for-fun Swedish based toto, but I'm doing terrible so far in predicting scores and winning teams. Much worse than the WC98 when I was one Atlantic Ocean away from winning a barbeque grill:

I took part of ESPN competition which theoretically only was open for US and maybe Canadian residents, but people worldwide participated. The final result of the competition was an US person at 1st, someone in Israel (!) on 2nd and me from Sweden on 3rd. It took a while until ESPN could publish an official winner's list, excluding all the top results from non-eligable people.

To make it even more interesting; all the predictions except for tiebreaker questions about how many goals would be scored in the final were public for everyone to see and copy into their own predictions. In ESPN you can team up with your friends, and a dozen or so managers from EEFL did. Needless to say, I was the only one to perform well, but if they had known, someone of the US managers could've copied my sheet and won themselves a Budweiser (?!) sponsored barbeque grill... :lol:
 
that's pretty cool about the bbq! well, at least you know you won it, kind of :)

i think spain will either beat or draw with portugal, and greece and spain will move on.

i think teams better be wary of greece, and i think that if they meet england in the quarters (yes england is a long way from securing a birth) greece will take them

did you see that second goal of croatia against france? holy smokes that was a nice effort!

go to get back to work, but i hope you have fun watching on the weekend!

chris
 
I just got back online after a sweaty Italian game. The Swedish commentators asked themselves why Italy couldn't put up a such good play against Denmark as they did tonight, but they were also aware that Italy is very good in playing under pressure.

Hm, if SWE-DEN ends 1-1 and ITA-BUL ends 2-0, I suppose a draw will decide which of Italy and Denmark goes through. Theoretically, both teams play at the same time and somewhat close to eachother, so maybe they could pack a bus and drive over to the other stadium for a penalty shoot out. Many people dislike penalty shoot outs, but at least it would be more fair than a draw.
 
what a great swedish equalizer!

i read somewhere, that if teams are tied on points, then goals scored, etc... they will then look back at their euro qualifying records to determine who goes through.
very strange

chris
 
Everyone say something different. Today I read that if the number of points is the same, you compare the results from games between the tied teams (so goal difference vs #4 is useless). The team who has scored most goals against the other tied teams go through, and if it still is a draw, maybe you look at total goal difference etc.

This means that no matter how many goals Italy defeats Bulgaria:

* if Sweden and Denmark play 0-0, Sweden and Italy go through
* if Sweden and Denmark play 1-1, Sweden goes through and there has to another way to separate Denmark and Italy (goals vs Bulgaria?)
* if Sweden and Denmark play 2-2, Sweden and Denmark go through

Of course, if either team wins the game, there will not be a tie at all.
 
that cze - hol game was really good. what a great eiro so far!
man, if not for those keepers, could have been a 6-5 game easy

one thing that is exciting about euro for me, versus world cup, is that there are only 16 teams to make it to the final is amaxing unto itself, and then you get grouped with strong teams once you make it to the quarter finals, INMO, you have done really good.
I am not saying that getting to the w.c. is easier than the euro finals, but that the odds of you running into a really hard opponent at the final event, has a higher probability in the euro, than the world cup.

here are my predictions anders, for the quarter final draws:

greece vs. england

spain vs. france

czech. republic vs. denmark

sweden vs. germany

i hope i did not screw up the group pairings
chris
 
I dunno about more difficult. The EC2004 had 15 spots plus Portugal (host), while the WC2006 qualifyers are:

Europe: 13 out of 51 teams (25%) + Germany (host)
Africa: 5 out of 25 teams (20%)
Asia: 4.5 out of 32 teams (14%)
South America: 4.5 out of 10 teams (45%)
North/Central/Caribbean: 3.5 out of 34 teams (10%)
Australia/Oceania: 0.5 out of 12 teams (4%)
 
Although I think your percentages only reflects the difficulty in getting to the final, but...

I think the overall skill level of Euro teams is higher than the rest of the world, and thus you have a better chance at running into a lesser opponent (in the opening round of the wc final) than in the euro.

there is a higher chance that soccer minnows make it to the wc final than the euro

chris
 
I see what you mean, but I think most of the world is getting closer in skill difference. We'll see two years from now if it was a fluke that an Asian team went to semi finals, and how far the best of the African ones can get.

Yesterday I watched the two games at the same time using two 28" TVs next to eachother. It was not my idea (I was at my boss' place), but it was quite a special sensation trying to concentrate on two balls and four teams at the same time. It's like "ooh, almost goal to the left" and "ooh, almost goal to the right".

I'll be leaving for a vacation trip on Saturday, so maybe I'll miss the semi finals but will be back home again on July 4th, which as you know is a very special date (no, I'm not referring to the Independence Day now).
 
that's neat about the 2 tv things, and i can't imagine how many times people would have loved to do just that

i guess they had the games on the same time yesterday then?

here in canada, they had the cro-eng game on at 18:45 UT i think, and then about 15 minutes after the first match ended, they started the fra-sui game.


hope you have fun on your time off!

chris
 
Yep, the last last two games in each group are played in parallel, and then it is up to the TV broadcaster to select one, delay the other or switch between them. When you have access to plenty o'satellite dish channels, it was not very difficult to find two showing one game each; in this case one German and one Swedish channel (displaying games played in Portugal between England-Croatia and France-Switzerland to a TV audience with Chinese, Italian, German and Swedish, which makes nine exclusive nationalities if one can count like that.)

Did I mention I'm going to Italy? :p
 
oh, i would love to go there! my daughter is in love with venice!

i hope you remember to wear your "denmark 2 - 2 sweden" t-shirt :)

ciao!

chris
 
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