Euro 2008: The Story So Far

The group stages are over and there has been some really great football along with some really dire stuff (Romania vs France springs to mind). There have been shocks along the way and there has been some pretty routine results as well but thankfully there has been shocks than we’d all hoped.

In Group A Portugal did what was expected of them and qualified as winners of the group but the game of the group was between Turkey and Czech Republic. The Czech’s were 2-0 up with 25 minutes to go but thanks to a couple of great finishes and Petr Cech’s costly mistake won the game 3-2 to go through to the quarter finals.

Croatia did what I knew they could and qualify, I said all along they were the dark horses for the tournament and they won all three games including a great 2-1 victory of Germany. Elsewhere Poland and Austria were disappointing and Germany despite faltering against Croatia qualified in second place.

Group C in the end turned out to be the most interesting of all the groups, before the tournament you would’ve expected Italy and France to both qualify considering they were both in the World Cup Final just 2 years ago. But no France failed to win a game and only scored 1 goal, Italy also struggled and got through with the skin of their teeth (like they always do).

But the story of the group and of the tournament has been the Dutch who have been on fire scoring 9 goals in 3 games and only conceding the one goal against France. Demolishing the World Champions 3-0 and disposing of the World Cup finalists of 2006 4-1 is impressive. However it doesn’t stop there because with their so called second string they finished off a Romania side that needed a victory to go through.

Group D saw Spain qualify for the quarter finals with some stand out performances from forwards David Villa and Fernando Torres. Meanwhile holders Greece crashed out miserably and the final game between Sweden and Russia was the crunch second place qualifying game. Sweden are an aging team with the likes of Ljungberg, Larsson, Mellberg and so on where as the Russians are on the up and play football quite sensationally. The result Russia out playing, out doing and most importantly out scoring the Swedes and won 2-0 to get through to the quarter finals for the first time in their history.