Euro 2008

As some of you may know the Euro 2008 Championship will start on the 7th of June(in case you didn't know, you do now ). In case anyone is interested I made this topic to talk about it. I also added a widget from the official website to show the latest scores and another one for the latest news.

That's pretty cool Luky. Now we're in the Know. I see Romania is going against France June 9th, should be a good game.

The timetable of games looks intriguing, some great matches in the making.

I'm throwing my hat in & backing Holland (Netherlands) to win the tournament, but there could easily be 5 or 6 other very strong candidates to win - France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Czech republic or Croatia & I've not even mentioned the defending champions Greece or the team with the most skilful player in the world Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal )

I hang my head in shame that England are not there, we manage to totally dominate the Champions League with Man Utd, Chelsea, Liverpool & Arsenal yet we fail to qualify for Euro 2008.

We have, on paper, the players available to win this & the World Cup, but consistently underperform in international matches & struggle with serious injuries to crucial players at the worst possible times.

Holland versus France looks to be the pick of the games to me on Friday the 13th, but also Tuesday 17th will be very interesting France vs. Italy a repeat of the World Cup final - unfortunately the great Zizou (Zinedine Zidane ) has now retired!

Up the Orange!
Who are you going to back?

I am sorry that England didn't qualify for the Euro championship and although they dominated Champions league(like you said) in the club teams there are players from other nationalities as well.Of course Arsenal has Walcott and other English players, Chelsea has Lampard,John Terry etc. but all the club teams have a lot of players from other nationalities. So there club teams play very good being helped by other players but I am surprised that as a national team they didn't manage to qualify.

Quite true, & I'll be the 1st to admit that non-English players have a a huge influence on the Champions League.

However, when we have this group of players:-

Rooney,
Gerrard,
Lampard,
Terry,
Ferdinand,
Cole (Ashley),
Cole(Joe),
Walcott,
Beckham,
Owen,
Barry,
David James,
Micah Richards
& a whole load of very good younger players coming through

you would think that we could at least qualify!

Who are you backing? (apart from Romania, of course)

There is also Peter Crouch from Liverpool and of course Paul Scholes(even if he isn't as young as he used to be ) other great players. I am sure they will qualify for World Cup 2010 . I don't; really have any favorite team, I would like to see Romania go as far as it can in the Championship but seeing the group they are in with Italy, Netherlands and France I would say don't stand a chance. I always say "may the best team win" whoever that team may be.

Great result for Romania today against France & if anything they were unlucky not to get a win.

Glad to see my team (Holland) did so well against the World Cup winners, even if the first goal was off-side.

Yeah I was really surprised that Romanian managed to get a draw against France. Though next game you will be destroyed by Italy since now they really need to win the next match(which is against Romania). We had luck as well and ended up in a draw. I really liked the way Netherlands played.We will see tomorrow how Spain will play but so far I think Netherlands and Portugal played the best football so far.
I also added a poll for people to vote. I voted for Netherlands since I think they played better then any other team so far.

I think Romania will give Italy a really tough time & have the right gameplan to frustrate supposedly more skillful opponents.
I'll stick my neck out & predict another 0-0 scoreline, or even Romania pinching a 1-0 against a frustrated Italy side on the counter-attack.

I hope you are right but I doubt it because if Italy doesn't win the match against Romania they are almost out of the competition.

Wait guys , so what happened with the france against romania game? Who won yesterday?

No one did. It was 0-0. A good result for Romania seeing as France are a good team. But they didn't play to good yesterday.France tried to build passes but every time they did so Romania stopped them . Romania played a defensive match and so France had really little opportunities. Anyway the best game yesterday was the game between Italy and Netherlands where Netherlands won by 3-0. That was a surprise for me seeing as Italy where considered favorites for winning this group and the Euro 2008 Championship(Italy are currently the winners of the World cup)

Nessa wrote:

Wait guys , so what happened with the france against romania game? Who won yesterday?

The results of the games are shown on Lukys tournament browser at the start of the thread, Nessa.

Well Luky, I think congratulations are in order to Romania for another great performance, I can't see them doing it again against Holland, but you never know Holland might take their foot off the pedal as they have already qualified & a win for Romania will knock out France & Italy.

True. I was really surprised by the way they played against Italy.To bad we missed that penalty. If we were to score we would have already been qualified.Anyway we had luck with the goal Toni scored when the referee said it was offside but I am not so sure it was. All in all I think it was a goo game and a good result. I really liked the atmosphere on the stadium. It was like they were paling on a Romanian stadium with the fans singing almost 90 minutes. We will see tuesday who will qualify in the quarterfinals. If we make a draw against Holland as well and Italy and France draw there game then we are qualified.Of course since both games are played at the same time the players won't know the result from the other match and Italy can be very impredictable so we need to win to be 100% certain that we will go throw the next round. We will see what happens on tuesday.

Romania can lose to Holland & still go through, if France & Italy draw, as long as they don't concede too many goals.

All 3 teams will have 2 pts each, but Romania's goal difference is better.

True.Even if they loose they mustn't loose by more then 3 goals.But I think Italy will win the game against France and then Romania will also have to win against Netherlands otherwise they are out of the competition.

Unlucky Luky - How long have I waited to say that?????

Romania did well against Holland & nearly held out for that draw, & could have snatched the lead.

But France were dire - they played like England, & Italy never looked back.

So near, yet it's over for Romania - but they can be rightly proud of their performances.

I think that Romania played there best match in this championship against Italy and in the match against Italy we lost a really big chance to win the game and get 3 vital points(from the penalty missed).Also I think the strategy used in the game against Holland wasn't good especially after half-time when we knew Italy scored against France. I think after half time we had to attack the entire second half in order to force a goal(at least one goal) since we didn't had anything to loose.Unfortunately I am sad to say that I was right after all since I had a bad feeling that Italy will win and we will loose.As a prof I even made a bet before the matches and said that Italy will win by 2-0(which it happened) and that Romania will loose by 1-0(which didn't happen but could have happened).I think that we needed to play a game and have the mentality of a game like Croatia had against Germany and Turkey against Czech Republic when they were two goals down with just 15 minutes left of the match but they managed to make a come back and win by 3-2. That is a winning attitude in my opinion and that is what Romania didn't had when we played against Holland. Anyway considering the group we played in I would say that we did pretty good, I am just annoyed because we could have done better.Even if we were to qualify in the quarter-finals we would have had to play against Spain and they would have defenetly beat us but at least we would have made it that far.

& on to the quarter finals....

my tips for the semis:-

Portugal vs. Croatia

Holland vs. Spain

I also think those will be the semifinals matches. We will see the first semifinalist today when Portugal plays against Germany.

Well I was completely wrong Germany totally outplayed Portugal.

But as the old cliche goes - That's Football!

True. Germany did played better then Portugal and deserved to go throw in my opinion. We will see tonight's quarter final Croatia - Turkey. I would say Croatia will win but I've been wrong before

Well it looks as if my predictions were the kiss of death,
each of the quarter-finals have gone the way of the least fancied team so far.

Russia were superb tonight against Holland, who were strangely subdued after their stunning displays in the group stages.

So, ?Italy to knock out the impressive Spaniards?

Turkey v. Russia in the Final?
That would have be totally unexpected a couple of weeks ago, but who would dare bet against the Turks after the comeback of the tournament.

True. I didn't get any of the predictions right. Russia played much better then Holland and Italy could indeed come back and actually win this competition after there poor start.But the Euro competition is known to have big surprises, I mean just look at Greece for years ago and Denmark in 1992 so pretty much anything is possible. I won;t make any predictions from now on since it seems I get them all wrong
All I want is for the best team to win whoever that team may be.