That ain't cool, especially when you leave your place of work and hear the results and actions being discussed in the streets...

It hadn't clicked, but when Italy won their World Cup, their manager made several bold attack-minded changes during the games.

This Italian team, even awkward, might have the same spirit.
Their forwards all scored, and they tried a three man defense, with a midfielder at its core.

It's a surprising band, with a clown (who hasn't done anything wierd off pitch since the tournament has started; poor Mario, to be talked about that much that way... he'll either be carded against England or celebrate like Cantona after scoring against Hart).

The French U-17 champions at the most ridiculous...
When they can't prove they're good footballers, they prove how big a French mouth can be...
Still competing with Holland for the most calamitous exit?

^ italy has a lot of great players, if they get their shit together they could win this thing.

Portugal are becoming the dark horse for me. They've been quietly impressive in all their games so far, and Ronaldo's the only one I've seen in the tournament so far who I think is capable of winning a game pretty much on his own, and he seems really up for it.

EDIT: What the bollocks?!? Germany have left out Gomez, Podolski, Muller and Bender!?!

ooooh mama

germany should be up by 3 at this point

schurle has been dribbling like a mutha!

schweinsteiger a bit off, giving away balls for no reason.

and LAHM!! i should have kept him haa haa. fuckin a.

---

post-game edit:

AWESOME GAME BY KLOSE!!

gomez did nothing

& i didn't expect the german defense to have such gaping holes. nice game, but germany still leaves me doubts. the game vs. italy or england will be the moment of truth. or did that already happen vs. portugal?? hmmmmm

I can't believe Germany score 4 and I manage to choose the ones who did nothing. And I 'cleverly' replaced Salpingidis before he'd actually played.

Orzil stood out for me, and Reus, but yeah, Klose had a great game. Khedira, too. And I agree about the German defence. Going forward they look pretty formidable they do seem vulnerable to counter-attacks. But I think the only true test for them will be Spain. And vice versa. Spain may edge it with their defence while Germany look like they have a far more potent attack but I don't see either England or Italy troubling them. Neither are very quick on the counter-attack. It'll maybe come down to how well Germany can cope with set-pieces. I tend to think whichever side faces them it'll be Pirlo or Gerrard who provide the main threat. But right now they do look like the team to beat.

not sure. all they'd need is a rooney or balotelli to outrun them a la jesus(samaras)/salpingidis and they'd be fucked. plus either team has a stronger defense than greece-- certainly better goalkeepers-- so i really wouldn't precount the chickens.

it's hilarious btw how much of a lumbering beast gomez is next to klose. he's great inside the area but don't ask him to dribble!

Balotelli? dribble? run? Have you not seen his contract? Seriously though, neither he or Rooney will provide that. I don't know about Italy but Walcott's the only England player who I think would worry Germany with his pace, but there's not even a guarantee he'll start and even if he does, it's a small chink in Germany's armour.

And I can't be the only one to spot the similarity between Gomez and George McFly.

Well, he may not be a technique portent, but that first goal against the Netherlands also tells me he's better on that field than a lot of strikers with his physique.

Concerning Portugal's campaign, either Spain or France are redoubtable adversaries. Anyway, for what it's worth, we've beaten Spain for 4-0 the last time we played them, not that long ago, and even though I don't remember seeing Portugal beating France on my lifetime, I think this year that is more likely to happen than ever.

well yeah he's awesome, i watch him play for bayern year-round, but it was funny to see the difference between the two, with klose being much more creative, especially after allowed to start. i wonder what could happen if they played together!


well definitely portugal has everything to kick france's ass this tournament, but i doubt they'll meet; after france's loss to sweden i think they are in disarray, so more likely it's going to be portugal-spain, and that's got all the elements to be an *epic* match.

Agreed on Portugal. Only saw the second half, but he looked amazing at times, although at the same time that's also their vulnerability. He has to play well for them to succeed.

I haven't been able to watch the Germany game... what's up with all the changes? Bender isn't first pick, he only played when Boateng was suspended... but what about the others? Anyone heard Loew's comments on that?


I haven't even seen the "highlights" yet, but I'm pretty surprised Greece conceded 4 goals and probably even more that Germany conceded 2 (even though one was a penalty apparently). I'm still betting on a Germany-Spain

final, but in a way I could picture every team still in it now end up winning this thing.

bender was in for boateng due to suspension. the penalty was bullshit in my opinon, boateng was turning his back to the ball and it hit him in the arm-- he in no way tried to block it, he was shrinking away from the ball w/ arm to his side, turning his back, not even looking. but eh, fuckers, whatever. there were other chances when germany was barely spared, it could have been 2-1 for greece but once germany scored their 2nd goal things opened up more.

löw was just trying to breathe some fresh air into the german attack and be less predictable and i think he did it very well, klose opened up a lot of spaces and rattled the greek defense-- even if he wasn't in every play he was always clever in his positioning. germany could have been 3-0 by the end of the first half but they wasted a lot of passes (schweinsteiger was having a bad day) and they missed a bunch of opportunities early on.

anyway i hope you get to catch it in replay. it was aninteresting game.

Yesterday's match was really interesting.
It looks as if all German players (apart from the keepers) have had a part in their team's victories - which will consolidate team spirit.

Tonight, France lost to the grandfathers of the Spanish team, who looked extremely bored.
The only players who can be relied on in a Spanish game are the subs, and you never know how long they'll have to play.
Fabregas scored his second as a sub, Navas brought pace and a goal, Pedro did the same and caused the penalty...
But the team that starts is so monotonous...

And if you've missed a game, here's a link to catch the goals in 3D, in miniclips that last over a minute, with different angles, but you'll see...

http://www.lequipe.fr/edito/football...uts-en-3d.html

I thought Spain pretty much sleepwalked their way through, and I totally agree about Spain's monotony. For a team supposedly synonymous with olay football, they're becoming one of the most boring to watch.

But the big shock for me was France, who looked about as disinterested as I think I've seen a team in the knockout stage. Ribery seemed about the only one remotely bothered. I knew they had some issues but most of them just seemed like they'd rather not've been playing at all. Blanc looked like a lost man towards the end. I'd love to know what the French people/media made of it all. That looked like a bigger collapse than anything I saw from Holland. At least the Dutch seemed frustrated, France just looked like they'd given up on themselves altogether as a team.

Well there you go. Another pen shoot out, another cop out. Italy clearly deserved to go through, England were pretty much non existent through the second half.

Pirlo's pen was just brilliant.

wow, that DID go to penalties as a bunch of us predicted, and it was INTENSE! especially at the beginning--wow! (then it was at times boring, but still...)

sorry to the eengleesh but italy did play a better game, even though they couldn't score during the game to show it.

anyway, looking forward to spain-portugal. it should be a GREAT match. i am going to gamble on spain winning, i think they should be able to neutralize cronaldo, they are used to doing that every day (unlike the poor czech), but it should be a great contest. only thing troubling me with that prediction is the spanish attack-- torres was shit in the last game and silva remains weak, so who knows about the score.

yesterday's game was sad for me, though i had expected the result, but i'll say ribéry wasn't the only one who deserved admiration in his team, lloris also was great, in this game and the previous one-- if only his defense had put the same heart into it!

from what i've seen today germany should beat italy in regulation time, as i expect them to control the midfield and finish better. but who knows, really? maybe this will all go wrong and i'll have to eat my shoe like werner herzog.

Cant complain, i'd have felt quite dirty if we'd gone through.

Two big decisions - Young should have been taken off after an hour, he was dreadful all day long, and he took Milner off. Milner was excellent.

Rooney donesnt work with these players, its telling that Rooney hasnt done much on the international stage since this bad motherfucker retired.

Pretty much agree with everything you say there. I'm disappointed, obviously, but have to agree that it would've felt a bit dirty had we gone through against such a clearly superior side.

Milner's been solid but he can't last more than 60 minutes, it seems. I think that's what forced Hodgson to sub him instead of Young who, I agree, was dire tonight. Worse than anonymous; constantly giving the ball away.

I thought Terry was immense but heroics won't be enough in every game. But then whatever happened tonight, I couldn't see any way past Germany and at least having Italy in the SF will potentially make that game a bit more competitive. Although I don't think Germany will have too much to fear from them on Thursday, either.

And yeah, while I've defended Rooney in the past, I'm beginning to agree with you about him, too.

Oh well. Gabby Logan still gives me the horn.

Italy will be knackered once they play Germany and I tend to think England made the Italian midfield look far more impressive than it is. They rely almost totally on Pirlo so as long as Germany can contain him the rest should be quite straightforward.

predictable. spain germany in the final, spain win.

i am sorry for England being out, for i had really wanted them to go through.
the truth is, they didn't deserve to succeed in this match.

Yeah. I won't pretend I wasn't hoping they'd win the penalties but it was embarrassingly one sided during the actual match. I just hope people don't start questioning Hodgson now. But as Ikara Cult says, there does have to be a real debate about what we do with Rooney.

Anyway, predictions for the Semis?

Spain v Portugal - I'm betting that Spain will defend too well to give Ronaldo or Nani any joy. 1-0 to Spain for me.
Germany v Italy - I can only see one winner there. 3-1 to Germany

Germany v exhausted Italy - Germany wins, and it'd be highly cool to see an Italian goal

Spain v Portugal...
I wish Portugal wins; I'm pretty sure Spain will stop their sleepwalking for that game, but I think there's room for a Portuguese win; as Helder Postiga is out, the team will look different, probably shaky when they start... I hope they do not collapse... they have it within their hearts... they can do it...
That'd be so good...

Group B and group C: everybody's survived!

England managed to stay longer in the tournament than expected but Italy was way better overall. Should have been in the pocket after 90 minutes. I never liked Italy as a team but they are playing very unitalian lately and nice to watch. I think they can even beat the Germans. Spain vs Ronaldo? Spain will raise their level and send Christiano home.

The only very unusual thing in this EC is the fact that Germany and Portugal had 2 more days of rest, unbelievable.

As much as I'm not particularly enjoying watching Spain this tournament, I do hope it's a Spain Germany final, purely because I think they are the two best teams in the tournament and if either win it without facing the other it'll inevitably cast some doubt over the credibility of their victory.

An Italian newspaper's depiction of Balotelli as King Kong isn't going down too well...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/eur...r-cartoon.html

^LOL!

I missed all the quarter-finals, except the Portugal one, so I can't comment on those.

But for tonight I'm gonna say 1-0 to Spain.
Ronaldo's been getting better as the tournament progressed, but all the Spanish defenders are used to playing against him regularly so it could be a difficult night for him. I would prefer Portugal to win though.


This is so strange and I've barely seen it reported/discussed anywhere. Why did they fuck up the schedule like this? It should be no more than 1 day difference like it has always been at previous tournaments.

ooohooohooo cronaldo cursed by the gods

most satisfying moment of the game was watching him walk out all sore

this game was more boringly a predictable dive than most NBA games! The announcers were talking about penalty kicks before even the first half ended..

meh.

...and to think I really didn't have to stay home tonight to watch this snoozefest. Bah.

tactically, it was hugely contested until probably the 2nd half of overtime when spain finally started to slightly dominate due to portugal's fatigue. in terms of overt spectacle however it was lacking, but it wasn't predictable at all. i think portugal put on a really good show, and could have won, so i don't see this game was "predictable". even cronaldo was denied a chance to shoot a penalty!



that's because it was very contested in the midfield, so you don't need announcers to tell you it will likely go to overtime.


ha ha


oh, come on, portugal stood up to spain in a huge way. yes, more chess match than fireworks in the end, but stil, i thought it was interesting, the way maybe entomologists find flies fucking also interesting (ha ha). but seriously, i love the way they clamped down on spain, super-focused, and they continued going on the offense until they ran out of gas.

looking ahead to the next game i think spain has a huge problem on the attack and germany (in theory) should dethrone them. i guess del bosque hates torres to have put negredo in but nobody would throw him a ball anyway. this was sort of a barcelona-real madrid match but without messi barcelona doesn't really shine the same way and without villa nobody scores, so i'm hoping germany will take advantage of that.

The second half was awful but I thought Portugal were great in the first half while Spain seemed to take control in extra time. Ronaldo not taking a penalty was odd and I still can't believe Ramos had the kahunas to pull a Pirlo with his one. He's slowly turning into one of my favourite players. For much of the actual game though, Spain still weren't really that convincing, and even when they did start taking control, I still couldn't see where their goal was gonna come from.

Haha. Del Bosque has a real problem there. I still don't think he knows who he wants up front. It's definitely Spain's weakness and if they do lose the final it'll surely be that that's pointed to as the reason. But I also think their passing's not as sharp as usual and there were a couple of moments in the first half when their defence was all over the place. Although a clean sheet against Portugal can't exactly be sniffed at. They managed to keep Nani almost completely out of the game.

As you say, not that spectacular but a definite treat for the armchair tactitions. I expect the guys over at that zonalmarking site were having babies.

spain has no attackers proper. shots to the goal came from iniesta, arbeloa, xavi hernandez, etc. silva as usual sucked, negredo was not functional there but that was probably because of the way the whole team plays.

i think maybe del bosque fucked the dog taking xavi out for pedro. i'm sure he wanted to go more on the attack but he could have taken someone else out and pedro didn't really work out.

Silva's been awful in every game bar the one against Ireland and as you say, Negredo didn't work at all. I do think Xavi was a bit anonymous though (as he has been for most of the tournament) and probably justified his substitution - especially as I actually think Pedro did ok. As Bertrand mentioned in an earlier post, Spain seem to improve when they sub in some younger blood. But none of their attacking options, even (dare i say it?) Iniesta, are really doing it.

!@#$%!

you misunderstood my casual abuse of syntax and grammar.

I didn't say the game was predictable, if anything Portugal's defense at shutting out Spain for the first time in 17 games was quite surprising. what was predictable my friend, was that Portugal took a dive ala Lebron 2010 and 2011 ;)

xavi wasn't his best but he's good on attack and defense and communicates well with iniesta and maybe silva could have gone instead.

pedro did nothing by the end of regulation time and only really appeared at the very end of the first overtime when he created a nice play out of the left corner but it came to nothing. then he missed a chance to score--idiotic. then he did some other stuff but he did it while everyone else around him was exhausted-- a kind of silva vs. ireland situation.

the substitute who did best in my eyes was actually navas. well, fabregas for negredo too but that was a wasted substitution.

re: their attack: i see iniesta as more of a playmaker, much like pirlo or ozil. sure all of them can score, and do, but it's more out of opportunity than from playing in a goalscoring position; and while iniesta is as versatile as it gets loves to shoot on goal he's not striker material.

the thing is, italy has balotelli and di natale and cassano (and diamanti, who can fill his shoes); germany has klose and gomez and mueller and schürrle and reus and podolski; spain has... silva? nice dribbling but totally melts down when facing the goal. negredo? couldn't do a thing. torres? in del bosque's shit list. llorente? hasn't played even once. fábregas is great but he isn't a natural forward. like you i think they will have trouble in the final. and i hope it's with germany! they have a great midfield but also they have lots of attacking options, as they showed against greece.


uh? who? i'm sorry man, i don't know anything about professional basketball nor cabrón james; the only dive i saw from portugal was cronaldo's, and he got a yellow card for it, the fucking clown.

I'm an enormous fan of Xavi and he's probably been my favourite player in the world these past few seasons, but, whether it's fatigue after a long season or simply not being in form, he's definitely not firing on all cylinders and I think that's a major reason behind the teams overall lack of bite up front. Another reason may be Del Bosque's decision to field two holding midfielders (Alonso and Busquets) instead of one, giving the midfield a far more defensive complexion than we've perhaps come to expect. In the right formation, and with both players in form, the Xavi-Iniesta partnership may be the most formidable in all of football right now but they're definitely not clicking at the moment.


I'd say Iniesta is one of the few players who can do just about anything but again, i think Spain's style is so dependent on every player clicking, and with Xavi clearly below par, I just don't think he's getting the service. Even so, I love watching him, even when his moves amount to nothing.


I can only imagine what Llorente must've done to upset Del Bosque. Why take a striker and not use him, especially when the others available aren't exactly proving prolific? I've heard he's not 100% fit but I'd have thought he'd still be useful, if only as a sub. Saying all that, the very fact that Spain have reached the final, however unspectacularly, without a functioning striker is pretty impressive.

But more seriously, we must never forget ...

haaa haaa haaa



i guess you're right about the xavi substitution (and paul scholes, iniesta, etc), but pedro sucked.

I found it mostly boring, especially the second half. I mainly blame Spain for that, mind, Portugal played to their capacities and even looked the better team in the first half (despite the statistics) and they could've won it even in the last minute when they broke out 4 against 2... I didn't see the Spain-France game that everyone called a borefest, so I'm taking the opportunity to bitch about them now instead. I stayed at home to watch them because it was the only game I could watch this week, but at the end I figured I should've done something else instead.

I think tonight's going to be a way more interesting game. Germany may have the better players but I think it's going to be closer than a lot of people think. I'd never rule out an Italian win, no matter how "bad" they may look... seen it happen too often.

I felt sorry for Bruno Alves who had to make the nerve-wrecking walk from the halfway line towards the penalty area twice because Nani called him back the first time... I didn't really expect him to score after that.