This is a single post from deeden.co.uk made during the period May 2002 to April 2009. During a previous grand redesign I decided to make a break with the past and consign the old entries to history. This entry is from June 2004 and lives here forevermore.

Euro 2004 (so far)

Well we’re now at the semi-final stage of the championship and it has proved a fairly strange affair. 4 of the six teams I thought could win the title are out already, only the Czechs and Portugese survive.

France were disappointing throughout the tournament. England should have beaten them, and probably would have if they hadn’t tried to defend deeply for an hour.The French then failed to impress in the rest of their group games but still managed to get through. I must admit that I thought they’d get their act together for the knock-out stages, however the Greeks came up with a plan and executed it well and ran out deserved winners in the quarter-final.

Spain self-destructed, as I suspected they would. They surprised me by doing it at the group stage rather than in the knock-out phase. None of their players really shone and they looked like a team that expected to be eliminated at some stage, rather than a team that thought they could win the title. Raul was particularly disappointing failing to hit the target with even the simplest chances.

England looked bright in patches but disappointed in the end. For the first half hour against France they looked a match for them but once they got the goal they stopped attacking and tried to hold out unsuccessfully. Sadly they failed to learn from that and resorted to the same against Portugal and went out. Much has been made of the decision to disallow Sol Campbell’s “goal”, but in reality England didn’t deserve to beat a superior Portugese side. For the second tournament in a row England failed to back themselves to win a match and deservedly lost.

Italy let themselves down again. Good chances were missed and promising positions thrown away, leaving Italy looking for scapegoats yet again. Rather than looking at their own players and their own style of play they have been claiming that Denmark and Sweden fixed a game. In reality Italy threw away the match against Sweden and had only themselves to blame for not being in control of their own destiny. Vieri failed to spark and, as I predicted, they couldn’t produce much else.

Who will win now then? Portugal, Holland, Greece and the Czech Republic are left. Greece seem unlikely to win it, although in Rehhagel they have a clever manager who has set them up well against their opponents so far. Holland still look unconvincing and have needed some debatable goals to get through. Portugal have played fairly well so far and in Scolari have a manager who seems to judge his players well and is willing to take a risk. As for the Czechs, they’ve been the best team in the tournament and have shown themselves to be able to overcome falling behind. I hope they win it as they’ve been the best team so far and deserve it.