The 2012 UEFA European Football Championship, commonly referred to as Euro 2012, is nowfive days old and for the first time we will see teams play thier 2nd set of games. There has been a lot fo good exciting football – we have now seen all the teams and groups in action. I will be writing a daily blog article with the salient features of all the games. Please send us your thoughts and comments on the form below. – Filip v d Plas-
GREECE - CZECH REP 1-2
A good win for the Czech Republic. They had to take something away from this match or they would be the first side to exit the tournament – and they did what they had to do and beat Greece. With a real electric start they produced2 goals in the just opening 6 minutes with Greece getting a goal back from former Hertha Berlin player Fanis Gekas. This after a rare fumbling mistake from Czech goalie Petr Cech.
Václav Pilař the young Czech striker – from Plzeň and now with Bundesliga VfL Wolfsburg – scored a great goal against Greece and it is upon this new generation that the new Czech team will have to build.
The Czechs have problems in an injured captain – Tomáš Rosický . He had to be replaced at half time as he has an Achilles tendon injury – which are horrid for any athlete they take a long time to heal. No official word yet on exactly his condition but “Mozart” – as he is affectionately called – is very important for this team which lacks depth of former teams.
I will not say anything more about this game other than to quote from a funny part of “Euro 2012: Greece v Czech Republic – as it happened” from the UK Guardian excellent football writer Barry Glendenning - ”The bad news is that the unfortunate Papadopoulos, who ruptured knee ligaments during the Galanolefki’s 1-1 draw against Poland, has been replaced by a chap with the same surname: Kyriakos Papadopoulos, who is no relation but suffers what some might describe as the misfortune of bearing a passing resemblance to chancellor of the exchequer George Osbourne.”http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2012/jun/12/euro-2012-greece-czech-republic-live
RUSSIAN – POLAND 1-1
It ended in a tie , two goals only with an irritatingly one sided German referee Stark – but in spite of that what a great game we were entertained to. The temperature was perfect – 16C for playing football – and this is not the case in heat-wave bound Ukraine.
First of all I have to add that I watched the game on German television and had to endure a completely stupid German commentator on ‘ARD 1′ who could not shut-up talking nonsense – in this case’ less-is-more’ like the BBC commenters who do not feel that they have to say the patently obvious.
The ‘ARD 1′ commentator kept saying what ‘a great referee’ Wolfgang Stark was – which was far from being the case! The commentator seemed to be biased for the Polish team which if he admitted would be okay – but pretending to be neutral is dishonest in this case. The German referee obviously did his best to give calls for Poland which was not correct – while not as bad technically as the Spanish referee in the tournaments first game – Stark was worse in being partial to one side. He should be prevented by FIFA from any more participation in this tournament.
While I personally wanted Poland to win……….I did not want Russia to lose! So in the end a tie was the best result.
Russian forward Alan Dzagoev opened the scoring on the 37th minute when he passed Polish keeper Przemyslaw Tyton from and free kick and then Jakub Blaszczykowski scored a brilliant equaliser early in the 2nd half for Poland. Those were the salient ‘facts’ of the match but they do not capture the excitement nor the footballing finesse we saw yesterday.
June 12th is Russia Day, but it while they played well they did not achieve the dynamism they showed in their previous win against the Czechs and therefore the result would have to be considered a ‘win’ for Poland. Dick Advocaat’s players will have to make a reality check – trying to play less attractive but more productive goals on their agenda if they want to maintain any notion of winning this tournament.
Dick Advocaat’s players will have to make a reality check – trying to play less attractive but putting more productive football which produces goals on their agenda if they want to maintain any notion of winning this tournament.
Robert Lewandowski continued to shine as the main threat on the Polish team and always a threat when he got the ball – which was not often enough – however this may have been because of the good defending by excellent Russian defender Aleksandr Anyukov.
Russian goalie Vyacheslav Malafeev had to be more than just awake to fend off some very good Polish counters late in the 2nd half when it appeared that if a goal were to fall then it would go to the Poles.
The Russians at this later stage looked almost a bit comatose and while not wasting time and playing for a draw – they instead continued to attack rather naively however without the pin-point passing accuracy they do so well.
I like the Russian team – they have depth, they pass the ball perfectly, they are fast, they have fluidity in their play, they defend well and are extremely fast. They have the depth to win this tournament.
While this game was not as good as their game against the Czech’s – also they did well and along with Poland should advance from this group.
Polish team consisted of ; Tyton, Piszczek , Wasilewski ,Perquis , Boenisch, Dudka, Polanski, Murawski ,Blaszczykowski ,Lewandowski and Obraniak
Russian team consisted of; – Malafeev – Anyukov , A. Berezutskiy , Ignashevich , Zhirkov Denisov, Shirokov , Zyryanov – Dzagoev , Kerzhakov and Arshavin
If you read German or know how to apply Google Translate see a good match commetary at - http://www.kicker.de/news/fussball/em/startseite/europameisterschaft/2012/2/1122626/spielbericht_polen_russland.html
The American Huffington Post is even covering the EURO 2012 - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/12/poland-russia-live-updates-euro-2012_n_1590828.html
See Previous Blog articles -
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EURO 2012 – Daily Report – DAY 5 – Czechs beat Greece & One-sided German ref and some rowdy fans do not spoil an exciting Russia/Poland encounter – Later Today Netherlands vs Germany & Denmark vs Portugal- by contributor Mr Filip van der Plas from OTA Berlin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Germany License. If you use this article or parts of it, please refer to http://www.ota-berlin.de.
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Nasir was indeed great and the Swedish coach was right about his players.