<p>Hopeless … as I wrote earlier.</p>
<p>It’s not the end of the world to admit that your perception is strongly colored by personal bias. Using your own turn of phrase, that’s part of being a sports fan. I love to denigrate Italy even when they play well, and don’t think they deserved 2006. But I still watch them play - you can skip the Spain games if they’re that painful for you.</p>
<p>Two more entertaining games today, with the outcomes I was hoping for.</p>
<p>3 of Spain’s goals so far have been scored by guys who never played for RM or Barcelona. Can we get beyond the Messi thing, already. </p>
<p>Spain is really missing Puyol. Del Bosque had to put Ramos next to Piqu</p>
<p>games today were good!</p>
<p>hoping for a minor miracle for the netherlands next… lol</p>
<p>Some people don’t like that Greece was so defensive, but I think they got bad ref calls in all their games. I’m glad they advanced.</p>
<p>Anything can happen, soccerguy. It’s football!</p>
<p>Well,
Holland was really absent this tournament. Didn’t play at all like a team in any of their games. Looking forward to watching my team tomorrow.</p>
<p>so much talent on the Netherlands to see such horrid play.</p>
<p>It was an interesting day of games though, as each goal was changing who was going through.</p>
<p>Spain has not been playing at their usual level. It is shown by the game results and lack of goals. </p>
<p>In my opinion, Germany has everything they need to win the Euro 2012. Spain has a chance but not likely with what’s occurring currently. Holland was just a disaster, hands down. Portugal has a slight chance to win this, unless Cristiano Ronaldo explodes his potential. Italy, in my opinion, just won’t. </p>
<p>My Predicted Final for Euro 2012</p>
<p>Germany vs. Portugal
My Score: Germany 2 Portugal 2 (Penalties: 4-2) Germany wins</p>
<p>Spain’s not playing the way a 2-time champion should be (well, unless Torres really is back in form which is a huge if), but they technically have the highest goals per game.</p>
<p>I don’t know which matchups end up where on the bracket, but in terms of strength I’d put it as Germany/Spain > Portugal/Italy > England/France > Everyone else. But we’ll see. I wasn’t impressed by Germany overall today, let’s not forget that they were one very reasonable call away from losing before jumping on the bandwagon (the Bendtner yank could’ve easily been a red card). Or the fact that they’ve needed 1-2 extremely high degree of difficulty goals every game thus far.</p>
<p>For now I’ll just say this. Spain has scored 5 and given up 2, in 2 games, the same as Germany after 3 games. The only team to have scored more than Spain is the Czech Rep.(6), and they have played 3 games and surrendered 4 goals.</p>
<p>Don’t know what happened to Russia. It looks like a completely different team from a week ago.
Netherland just didn’t have a playmaker as CR. Robben’s assist was good but not much from him since.
Germany got lucky with the no-call for pulling jersey in the penalty box. Hope they will take care of Greece.</p>
<p>France is extremely underrated at the moment, and that will work in their favor. They are currently riding a 23 unbeaten streak (the longest active streak I believe), including wins vs England, Brazil and Germany in recent months. </p>
<p>CollectivSynergy, France was not “awful” in the 2006 World Cup. In fact, they were clearly one of the best teams in the World at that time…as well as in the Tournament. Italy’s extremely defensive style tends to make most games they play in boring, which is why the final itself was not the most exciting. But to say that France was awful is way off. On its way to the finals of the 2006 World Cup, France beat Spain 3-1 in the first elimination match, Brazil 1-0 in the QF, Portugal 1-0 in the SF before losing to Italy in penalty shootout in overtime. Had Zidane not fallen for Materazzi’s shameless insult, who knows how the game would have ended. You do not dominate the 2002 and 2010 World Cup champions like France did in 2006 if you are not excellent. Any team that features Zidane (one of the top 5 footballers of all time), Thuram, Henry, Viera to name a few cannot be considered “awful”.</p>
<p>As for the 2012 Euro, I have not seen a dominant team yet. German, Spain, Portugal, Italy can all win it. England and France are also potentially dangerous, if they make it to the next stage.</p>
<p>I never said France was awful… please read. I brought them up because xiggi has been harping on Spain scoring 8 goals in WC 2010 repeatedly as evidence that their attack is garbage. Meanwhile, France scored 9 in 2006, and there’s not a peep from him about that.</p>
<p>Anyway, France has looked pretty good so far. I have a hard time believing they’ll go the distance, but it’s one of my more subjective predictions.</p>
<p>Don’t like Spain’s new uniforms.</p>
<p>Me either. Looks like Uruguay’s.</p>
<p>Apparently the blue didn’t suit a lot of the players today. They weren’t as good as usual. They really miss Villa and especially Puyol. </p>
<p>I think France should take its group. I wish Big Benz would score!</p>
<p>A correction to my earlier post. Spain only gave up 1 goal in the 2 games, so now has scored 6 against surrendering 1</p>
<p>Viva La Roja</p>
<p>Agreed, they remind me of Uruguay or Argentina. Not very Spain-like.</p>
<p>I haven’t seen enough of Uruguay or Argentina lately to comment on that.</p>
<p>My problem with Euro 12 is I cannot watch the games at 5:30 AM PST before I go to work.</p>
<p>I meant the uniforms, sorry I should’ve clarified. That powder blue color is just a very odd choice for Spain.</p>