er, that should be 33/1, obviously…
Most hilarious piece of commentary is so far a tie between:
<Switzerland vs Croatia; a Swiss player is fouled>
“Hakan Yakin.”
“He certainly was.”
… and the numerous references in the England vs France game to the flexibility of the French players - “his long tentacle legs”, “the elastic Fabien Barthez”. By the end of the match it seemed more like England vs Cthulhu.
Random observations so far:
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The obligatory New Official Ball is really ugly. Silver with black insulating tape is not a good look for a football. And guess what, apparently it’s really light and bounces too high. Couldn’t they just once have a tournament in which they used regular, everyday footballs?
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Somebody’s got to tell those ballboys to not be quite so keen to replace a ball that has gone out of play. There have already been several occasions when the game has been held up because there are two balls on the pitch.
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(UK-centric) Apparently there’s no widescreen TV feed from Portugal. I couldn’t care less about that, but the widescreen-obsessed BBC insist on showing the game in a tiny postage-stamp-sized box in the middle of the screen (on my set-top box, at least), just so that you can enjoy the half-time thoughts of Alan Hansen and Peter Schmeichel in glorious 16:9. Why?
Pah!
In all honesty the French deserved to win and an England victory would have been a travesty. Still hurts though.
Some thoughts:
Why does Heskey even get a game? He’s a useless cart-horse.
Where was Owen? That was the worst performance by him in living memory.
Well done Ledley! You too Rooney! A pat on the back for Lumpalard too.
Judging from the match between them Switzerland and Croatia shouldn’t cause us any problems, so I’m still reasonably content about qualification. In any case there is a theory that second is the place to finish in this group, as it offers an easier path to the finals. Maybe that’s sven’s plan.
I’m interested to see Italy tonight - Second favourites in my book.
Because he’d entered the stage of his match where, as usual, he was bombing about like a nutcase who’s running out of steam. I don’t understand how he managed to leave the field without a yellow card to his name.
And the the new ball is really ugly. Looks like a cannon ball with repaired with insulating tape. You’re going to think twice about heading that.
Four points might well be enough, and having sat through the entirety of Switz-Croatia it does look achievable, although they’re bound to play better against us. Didn’t know about the second place being arguably better. Off to consult the wallchart.
NTL Digital feed does that which is very annoying indeed. I had to changed the ratio setting on the box to fix it so I was getting it in 4:3 widescreen which looked grand.
I know. I was shocked!
I still don’t understand why Heskey continually gets the nod over James Beattie though. Beattie plays for Southampton and yet is consistantly in the top three English scorers in the Premier League for og’s sake. Heskey on the other hand… well, he may make top 3 in falling over while on the ball
bolding mine.
Well **owlstretchingtime[/] you sure called that one !!
I was pretty pissed at the results England vs France.
Had a good day today, though.
Congrats Danmark. What a goallie! Well, so, for that matter was Italy’s. But I loved the game. I’ll be voting for Danmark, as of now.
Well my money is on Spain.
I have them to ‘win teh prize’ (sorry) @7/1
Also had France to win 2-1, picked up £8.75 there, should pay for the next round 
There being no Celtic nation in this tourney, my prefs would be for either Spain or Sweden to win it. So far, I’m pretty happy with the way things are going 
I only saw the first half of Sweden v Bulgaria and Bulgaria looked pretty good, unlucky not to score a couple of times. What on earth happened to them to cause that result?
In short, Sweden kicked fuckin’ arse. :eek:
Yeah, I know, it’s a bit of a shock. Sure, they’ve got some excellent players who are usually fielded in even more excellent squads (cough Ajax Amsterdam Olé Olé! cough ;)), but they’re usually still a pretty poor team. Kinda like Holland, yes. Indeed.
But tonight? My lord. I was expecting this to be a dull 1-0 for Sweden, out of a dubious penalty or something. But what a cracker! Sweden really put themselves on the map tonight.
And for a moment I was confused. Bulgarian defender, called Ivanov, fair enough. What happened, did he go into rehab?? I was thinking of Tristan Ivanov - remember him?? He looked like Jesus, supposing for a moment that Jesus was addicted to crack cocaine. Apparently, the new Ivanov’s a whole 'nother dude.
Kudos to Denmark for keeping the nil. Battle of the goalies, that one was.
One more night of sleep, lads and lasses. And then, THE match is on. I’m so fecking nervous it ain’t even funny.
I can’t believe the Bulgarian meltdown.
The wearing of my lucky Euro 96 Bulgarian top while watching the game had no effect at all.
If only the bald wonder Letchkov was still playing.
At least I got to laugh at England though.
Still reserving judgement on Larssen until he scores against decent opposition.
Who am I kidding, his first goal was an absolute cracker. Actually, Bulgaria looked quite good in the first half, which makes the mullering subsequently administered to them by Sweden all the more impressive. Best team performance so far.
So, Coldfire, who are you going to watch it with? Got a whole room of people?
Did you see that street on the news, where they used about 20 miles of small orange flags hung up from house to house? With an orange beer tent in the middle? And kids with orange hair?
I mean, what if you live on that street and you don’t like football? 
What are your predictions? Ofcourse I hope we’ll win, but I have the nasty feeling we won’t. I’d say 2-1 for Germany.
Let’s hope I’m wrong. 
I’m going to watch it with a couple of mates in Utrecht, actually. Ought to be fun, although beer will only be had in small quantities, as I have to drive back.
Yeah, I saw an item on the news. I think the 4 km’s of ribbon was in Doetinchem, and the beer tents were in Tilburg, where I’m originally from. I liked how they had to subtitle the dude with the Lemmy-moustache.
Predictions? Netherlands 4, Germany 1. Yeah, call me an optimist, but if Sweden can beat Bulgaria by a 5 goal margin, then surely we can beat the Germans by 3.
Not a chance! The Germans just don’t have the players to compete with Holland this time around. Ballack and Kahn are the cornerstones of the Mannschaft, and they’ve been pretty horrible all year long. The German midifeld is average at best, Nowotny and Wörns are too old and slow in defense, and the German attackers are bad compared to previous German teams (Kevin Kuranyi anyone?).
I have a feeling the Dutch are going to start slowly and nervously, but once they realize they can beat those guys, they are going to sweep them up, and end up winning 3-0.
Well, I’m glad we agree on this. The Germans don’t deserve to win, because they will most certainly be playing “anti-football”.
So, what did you think of Totti’s brutal foul near the end of the game against Denmark? I think he deserved a red card for that attack. He could have completely torn that guy’s knee up.