PARIS—No! No! No! Don’t stop a-scorin!
Seven more goals on Day 5 of Euro ’08 action. I think Mlle. Trotter and I are the good luck charm for massive scoring outputs. We’ve stayed in to watch the games at home the last two days, depriving ourselves of the euphoric experience of hearing a collected mass of humanity cry out in unison when that magical spheroid finds the back of the net, seven times each night. You can thank us with a medal, or by building us a monument. Your choice.
Now the bad news: we’re hitting the town for the Group B matches tonight, doing the bar thing with friends. Goalless draws are here again.
Portugal and the Czech Republic put on a fantastic show in last night’s early game, with both teams attacking from the opening whistle in the hopes of avoiding the cruel-but-deserved fate handed by the footballing gods to defense-first Greece on Tuesday. The Czechs truly merited a better result, but Portugal, wearing white, finished their chances better than their opponents in equally counterintuitive red (it seemed like Deco was setting a Portuguese teammate up for a golden opportunity every other minute) and with the 3-1 win Porto is the first team to qualify for the knockout stage. Congrats to Luiz Felipe Scolari’s boys, and let’s hope the recent confirmation of the manager’s move to Chelsea doesn’t prove a Parcellian distraction for the Fightin’ Lusitanians going forward.
In the late game, the story was the pitch. I hear swampland in Florida drains better than the St Jakob-Park stadium in Basel. After a spectacular storm, extreme standing water impeded the movement of the ball along the ground (a rather important thing in soccer) and turned the first half into a tiny-tikes game of kick-it-as-far-as-you-can-in-the-air and run-after-it, only the Swiss were quicker to catch on than the more ball-talented Turks. The former opened the scoring on a centering pass that literally sloshed and stopped in a puddle a foot from the goal line and was tapped in by Hakan Yakin.
And according to the French commentators on TF1, that was it. It’s over. Game, set, match. Of course, the team scoring first had won every game in this tournament, they noted, so why would this be any different? And as they mentioned this fact, Yakin missed a second tap-in from almost the same spot as his first. No worries, though. They already scored first. The Swiss had it in the bag.
But as King Kaufman of Salon reminds us during every international soccer tournament, it’s actually the second goal that matters—the team that scores second historically enjoys a higher winning percentage than teams scoring first. So when Turkey tied the game 1-1 in the second half, it was bad news for the Swiss. And the maxim had been proven true once again when, two minutes into injury time, Arda Turan fired home the winning goal. Second goal equals good times, people.
Except, of course, that the Czechs had scored the second goal a couple hours earlier, and lost. Confused yet? Me too. That’s why the team who scores the most goals wins. It’s simpler that way.
Now, heading into Sunday’s final group match between the Czechs and the Turks, the two sides sport identical stat lines: one win, one loss, two goals scored, three goals allowed, three points. The Czechs must be kicking themselves (it’s what they do best) for allowing a late goal on a counterattack when they were pressing for an equalizer against Portugal, because now, with the teams even across the board, their final game is a true elimination contest. According to Euro 2008 tournament regulations:
7.08 : If two teams which have the same number of points, the same number of goals scored and conceded play their last group match against each other and are still equal at the end of that match, the ranking of the two teams in question will be determined by kicks from the penalty mark, provided no other teams within the group have the same number of points on completion of all group matches.
So tune in Sunday at 20h45 for the first “unofficial” knockout game of the tournament!
Wednesday recap
Winners: Portugal 3-1, Turkey 2-1
Top Player: Cristiano Ronaldo played like the best player in the world, firing seven shots, five of which hit the target and one of which, off a marvellous pass by Deco, beat Petr Cech. For comparison, the entire France-Romania snoozefest featured a single shot on goal.
Best Goal: Ronaldo’s was good, but for drama and quality, you have to give it to Arda Turan. Too bad I can’t link to the video, because UEFA’s a douchebag.
In-Game Beverages: Homemade sushi was on last night’s menu, so naturally we washed down my falling-apart spicy tuna rolls with Asahi. It was super dry.
Tonight: Mlle Trotter and I head to Paris’s 20ème arrondissement for Germany-Croatia in the early tilt, followed by perogies and Zywiec at a Polish bar where we’ll meet with friends for Poland-Austria. In attendance will be our Austrian friend Gregor, courageously taking the plunge into what he termed the “lion’s den.”
Predictions: Germany 1-1 Croatia, Poland 2-0 Austria. Sorry, Gregor!
PARIS—“Goals, goals, goals!” proclaimed the flashing neon sign outside the dingy strip bar that was last night’s Group D. After three days of football that witnessed three goals apiece, the four ‘D teams’ came together to produce a sexy offensive show akin to what you’d find in the more depraved quarters of Tijuana. (more…)
SAINT EMILION, FRANCE—Finally, some drama. Unfortunately for the residents of Saint Emilion, a village of 2,800 in the southeast of France and quite possibly, pound-for-pound, the greatest winemaking centre in all the world, half of the drama came at the expense of their beloved Bleus.
OK, maybe “belovedâ€? is a bit strong. I watched Romania battle France to a surprising 0-0 draw (surprising only to those who didn’t tag the Romanians as their tournament dark horse—doh!) at a small bar downwards from the église on the hilltop in the centre of town, and caught Holland’s destruction of Italy in the second game at a lovely restaurant near the centre of town, where most diners and the entire staff rejoiced at the 3-0 thrashing handed the Azzurri by the Dutch.
I have two embarrassing admissions to make, and I will consider it entirely fair if, having heard them, you refuse to read this blog ever again: (more…)
ARCACHON, FRANCE—The four-hour train trip from Paris got us into lovely Arcachon, an Atlantic coast town two hours north of the Spanish border, just in time to catch Saturday’s opening match between the Czechs and the Swiss. The Sportstrotter fiancé and I watched at Café de la Plage, a classy bar just a football throw-in from the ocean, where we enjoyed the first of four weekend meals involving oysters (they’re a bit too salty for breakfast, you know). Our weekend count hit thirty-three oysters, a feeble dent in the area’s annual haul of some 15,000 tons. But we did our best. The match atmosphere subdued in this not-yet-hitting-its-stride summer holiday town, with the bartender refusing to put the game sound on, opting instead for an enthusiastic song and dance to Elton John and Billy Joel. Still, we caught Vaclav Sverkos’s goal off a slick through ball in the seventy-first minute, the young Czech forward slotting home the goal fifteen minutes after coming on as a substitute and ruining the day for the giddy Swiss fans in Basel, who were dealt a double blow along with a 1-0 loss when their top forward, Alex Frei, was knocked out of the game (and, reportedly, the tournament) with a knee injury that had him in tears on the sideline. Not a great day for the colour-reversed Red Crosses. (more…)
PARIS—This afternoon I’m off to Arcachon, a small holiday town on France’s Côte d’Argent and a short drive from Bordeaux. No, I didn’t run the calculations and determine this to be the capital of French and European football passion, and thus the perfect place to celebrate the start of Euro 2008. I’m here for the wine, to celebrate my birthday, and to maybe dip a toe in the ocean. Hey, even the Sportstrotter needs a weekend away from the grind.
First off, if you missed yesterday’s preview and want to catch up, you can find it here. For everybody in the know, let’s live in the now. I’ll be enjoying the region’s glut of oysters tonight, but will also be keeping an eye on the first games of the tournament, Switzerland versus the Czech Republic and Portugal versus the Turkey. The Czechs and the Portuguese are the favourites from this group. But compared with most World Cups, the Euro’s group stage often doesn’t work out the way one would expect, so don’t be shocked to see favourites upset by a draw, or even a loss. My rocks-for-brains gut feeling: Switzerland, eager to impress the home fans and shed the image of “stultifying enemy of good football� that they earned with their defence-first-and-always performance two years ago in Germany, comes out with an attacking mindset against the Czechs, who take advantage of this by scoring early, and maybe even often. In the nightcap, the Turks surprise the Portuguese. Don’t ask me why—the Euro isn’t always about why. These things happen. Just roll with it.
PARIS—I was finally going to write about pétanque this week. Really, I was.
But then the big cheeses at the Union of European Football Association checked their 2008 Far Side desk calendars, and noticed that June 7 was not simply the day that featured a comic of two safari hats on top of a pit of quicksand, with a nearby parrot squawking, “Let go Morty, you’re pulling me in! Let go Morty, you’re pulling me in!â€?
No, those boys discovered that June 7 was also the Sportstrotter’s birthday, and so UEFA President Michel “Don’t Call Me Mike” Platini proclaimed to his chargés (en Français, bien sur): “You know what, that Sportstrotter’s not half bad. We should throw him a party. A twenty-three-day, thirty-one-game party featuring sixteen of Europe’s best national teams.â€?
And so it came to pass that tomorrow begins the 2008 European football championship. And it was good. Scratch that: it was very good. (more…)
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