Football Fanats 2008

[Akoss Poo a.k.a. Zorromeister]

DICKSUCKER NATIONALELF!!!  THEY DESERVED IT 

[Chulk]

Nice victory for Croatia! About quarter-finals prediction, I can't remember where we predicted about each group classified teams... Any suggestion where to start?

[Chulk]

Found it

My tips are the following:

Group A: Czech Republic, Portugal
Group B: Germany, Croatia
Group C: Italy, Netherlands (Sorry Krys!)
Group D: Spain, Greece

According to this quali, I'll tell quarter-finals results as soon as I find the draw for those matches.

[CTG]

First real surprise of the tournament: amazing croatian team, a bit confused german. Now they proved kicking England's ass was not only a lucky accident...

[BonzaiJoe]

CZE-POR 1-0
SUI-TUR 2-2

CRO-GER 0-2
AUT-POL 1-1

ITA-ROM 1-0
NED-FRA 2-1

SWE-ESP 0-2
GRE-RUS 0-1

[CTG]

Very, very, very lucky and undeserved penalty for Austria. On the other hand the Polish goal was offside...

Strange thing:

- Polish player scored 3 goals in Germany team, two versus Poland (Podolski)
- Turkish player scored a goal in Switzerland team versus Turkey (Yakin)
- Bosnian player scored a goal in Sweden team (Ibrahimovic)
- Brasilian player scored a goal in Portugal team (Deco)
- Brasilian player scored a goal in Poland team (Guerreiro)
- Croatian player scored a goal in Austria team (Vastic)
...

Naturalization of foreigner players is disgusting. National teams should be PURE.

[BonzaiJoe]

There are really only two ways to determine where someone comes from:

1. citizenship

2. birthplace

You cannot use birthplace, because that would mean people would have to play for a country they don't have citizenship in, which I believe would be legally impossible and "freeze out" players that leave their original countries.
So you have to go by citizenship, and then it happens that some players are originally from other countries. But it's a national championship after all, not a racial or ethnic championship. Currently it's an interstate championship. A national championship is impossible.

[Duplode]

Well, a couple years ago I tended to be rather radical against nationalized players too. Later I realized applying birthplace criteria would be a huge injustice to, at the very least, people who emigrated as children, or even in their early teens, and lived in another country ever since - how come people that were brought up in a certain country must be supposed not to identify with it by default? The bottom line is: there are two extreme cases: players that achieved citzenship after emigrating as babies and reached the NT much later and people that requested citzenship with the sole purprose of playing in the NT. No argument against naturalization in NTs can possibly be valid unless the proponent has a suggestion for discriminating between those two cases in a fair and effective way (even that would probably not be enough, BJ's interstate tournament perspective is a pretty solid one).

And BTW, a quick look at Wikipedia reveals that:
1. Hakan Yakin was actually born in Basel, Switzerland;
2. Lukas Podolski emigrated to Germany merely two years old; and
3. Zlatan Ibrahimovic was born in Malmö, Sweden

That was a pretty sad choice of examples for the argument...

---

Back to football: Great result for Croatia today! Too bad Croatia v. Poland will be on Monday, now I would really like to watch it... Let's wait for the Austrian upset...

[CTG]

Hungary had only 3 "foreigner" players so far (Akoss: correct me if I'm wrong):

Vasile Miriuta (Romanian, 2000-2003) - quite good midfield in a good Hungarian team (good = a lot better than now ), 9 matches, 1 goal. He also used to be the best scorer of Györi ETO in the late 90's.

Thomas Sowunmi  (Nigerian, 1999-2006) - the only nigger and a very crappy forward with 10 matches and 1 goal. Alibi player...

Leandro de Almeida (Brasilian, 2004-) - defender with average skills, still close to the national team. Stats: 7 matches, no goals. One of his junior teams was Corinthians.

[CTG]

I think the knockout phase will be:

Quarter-finals

Portugal - Germany (because C. Ronaldo is a gay asshole)
Croatia - Czech Republic (go Croatia, go!!!)
Netherlands - Sweden (simply better team)
Spain - France (because they are dirty lucky as always, sorry Töff. And also because Spain can't grow up to big events, even if they seem to be the strongest team of Euro2008 so far)

Semi-finals

Portugal - Croatia (because C. Ronaldo is still a gay asshole)
Netherlands - France (finally... )

FINAL

Portugal - Netherlands (shit... gay asshole C. Ronaldo will be the player of the year )

[CTG]

Netherlands - France in half time: exciting match, very good start from Dutch team. After the 30th minute France started to play their real football and caused many trouble for van der Sar. Henry's performance is a kind of disappointment for me - let's see if he's able to play better in the second half or not.

Italy - Romania: no comment, refrees should go to hell with the whole Romanian national eleven. Italy was ways better but they lost a valid goal and was punished by an unfair penalty. Luckily Buffon saved the shot of dirty gipsy Mutu. I think Italy is almost out...

[CTG]

Dutch whitewash... I can't find any words, we can talk about Netherlands only in superlativus... The best match of Euro2008 so far (NED-FRA was also amazing in 2000).

The fourth goal was even nicer than the Ibrahimovic bomb!

[Chulk]

Well, my tips wherenot so accurate, but at least I got Ned as winner...
BTW, amazing performance by the Neds so far! I thought they might be a surprise (remember I tip for them as a surprise champion) but not at this level. They have already beaten (or ass-kicked would be better ) 2 of the candidates to be champions. And Rom doesn't suck as much as I thought. Hpofully "Group of the dead" will end up "killing" the 2 big dogs!

Edit: My tips for weekend matches: (I'll be really specific)

Sweden 1 (Ibra will score a goal out of nowhere, as usual)
Spain    3 (Villa will score 2 and a defender will score after a corner or free kick)

Greece 0
Russia  0
Most boring match of EURO so far...

Switzerland 0
Portugal     1 (C. Ronaldo will score an unfair PK)

Turkey       0
Czech Rep. 1 (Jankulovski, direct free kick)

[CTG]

My tips for the last round:

SUI-POR 1-2
TUR-CZE 1-1 (just to see penalties at the end! Strange rule... and UEFA likes drama)

AUT-GER 1-3
CRO-POL 1-0

NED-ROU 2-1 (ROU kills the game while NED will play as a B team - let's hope they won't be so unfair to let ROU win just for eliminating ITA/FRA)
ITA-FRA 1-2

ESP-GRE 2-0
SWE-RUS 2-1

[Akoss Poo a.k.a. Zorromeister]

My tips for the last round:

SUI-POR 1-2
TUR-CZE 1-1 (just to see penalties at the end! Strange rule... and UEFA likes drama)

AUT-GER 1-3
CRO-POL 1-0

NED-ROU 2-1 (ROU kills the game while NED will play as a B team - let's hope they won't be so unfair to let ROU win just for eliminating ITA/FRA)
ITA-FRA 1-2

ESP-GRE 2-0
SWE-RUS 2-1

Mine are:

Switzerland-Portugal 0-0 (most boring game of ECH, UEFA asks POR to give a point to SUI)
Turkey-Czech Republic 0-1 (very hard match, Turkish defense makes a mistake)

Austria-Germany 0-2 (GER wins prestige match easily)
Croatia-Poland 2-2 (POL says farewell with heads up, 2-2 on a good match)

Netherlands-Romania 1-3 (UEFA bribes NED to lay down or NED wants to eliminate ITA/FRA to avoid a tough meeting in the semis, van Basten is unfair)
Italy-France 1-1 (they will cry together)

Spain-Greece 2-0 (Spanish offense is too hard for the disciplined, but technically mediocre GRE defence)
Sweden-Russia 2-1 (on a good match, with goals of Ibrahimovic)