Don't worry, there'll be worse Czech puns than that before this is over
Day 8
Spain and Sweden, who since being drawn together in qualifying as well as the tournament proper have seen more of each other than Britney and her therapist, regarded each other as old mates on their Sunday morning meeting. Fans from either side blew kisses at each other and the teams entered battle like flatmates duelling at backyard cricket - a fight to the death, but for fark's sake don't spill yer beer you tryhard. And of course, there's always got to be someone who has to bollocks it up for everyone by being the uber tryhard of all time; I give you David Villa, scorer of a supremely arsey injury-time winner, his fourth goal of the tournament. Yeah good on ya Davo, now go and get us another beer ya poof. Given there's only been one other game it's safe to assume Villa had a hat-trick in that - yay for arithmetic - so it's also safe to say Villa is the archetypal no-name player of the tournament who's going to score a bucket of goals, nab the tournament Golden Boot, sign a fuck-off-enormous contract with a Big Club, and then disappear into obscurity. For previous case histories please see Schillaci, Toto (WC90); Brolin, Tomas (EURO 92); Salenko, Oleg (WC94); Suker, Davor (WC98); Baros, Milan (EURO2004); and Klose, Miroslav (WC06 - OK he's still around but scoring 5 goals shouldn't be enough to win you the Golden Boot in any tournament, and he's funny looking, so fuck him).
Meanwhile, in the Who Cares Fixture To Rule Them All, Russia beat Greece 1-0. And by fuck was it dull.
Day 9
Portugal lost. Mwahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!
OK so it was to one of the co-hosts who were vastly more up for it than they were, and having already qualified for the finals they trotted out their B-team, but... their B-team got FUCKED THE FUCK OVER by SWITZERLAND, the first team punted out of the tournament for fuck's sake. You'd think in a 23 man squad Big Phil Scolari could have picked a bit of depth, perhaps? Or was he already thinking about his squad at Stamford Bridge?
Fair play to the Swiss though. And to the Turks, for their arse-to-end-all-arsiness three-goal comeback against the Czech Republic to bounce the Czechs out of the tournament, and themselves into the quarters.
Day 10
Germany won the State of Origin clash against the Austrians with a fairly ugly 1-0 win, courtesy an industrial strength free kick from the Dog's Ballacks. The game would have been enlivened considerably had the Austrian coach played his country's topless beach football side who beat their German counterparts 10-5 the day before.
Putting the 'tit' in 'gratuitous'... which there isn't, of course
Elsewhere Croatia trotted out their B-team and still beat Poland 1-0. You watching this, Portugal? All in all some horribly dull football but it gives us a decent pair of quarters thus: Portugal vs Germany (should be fun) and Croatia vs Turkey (should be messy.)
Whither the Choke Republic?
My first major football tournament - in that I followed all the games and tracked all the results - was EURO 96, which many people believe was held in 1996. Being approximately 51.125% Italian, I was obviously backing the Azzurri, runners-up in the last World Cup in the States, despite them being fairly gash in the USA 94 games I'd seen them in (which mostly involved 89 minutes of them puddling about doing a piss-poor impersonation of catenaccio despite being at least a goal down at the time, then 1 minute of Roberto Baggio doing something frankly astonishing and saving the fucking day again). Obviously, this being immediately following a decent showing in a World Cup, the Italians conspicuously failed to turn up and didn't make it out of the group stage. Which meant no team for me. I considered with backing England, but despite it seeming OK in principle, there's something fundamentally wrong about it, like Shannen Doherty's head. (One eye is lower than the other, since you asked.) Anyway they went out on a penalty shootout to ze Chermans before I had a chance to think seriously about it. That left tournament debutants the Czech Republic.
The Czechs were easy to like. They were one of the freshly-liberated Eastern Blockers - the Velvet Revolution, liberated without a drop of blood being spilt, the whole deal - who had a young team who went like the clappers, passed the ball like they were on bonuses for playing entertaining football, and scored some heroically bullshit goals - Poborsky's halfway-line lob vs Portugal in the group stage still routinely gets votes as the best goal in the history of EURO tournaments. And somehow they swaggered and arsed and enthused their way to the final vs Germany, and were one-up therein and looking to win the Whole Damn Thing...
Cue a double from Oliver Bierhoff, one in the second half, the other a Golden Goal in extra time. Well that was fun. Maybe next time, lads?
Except the Choke Republic had inadvertently shown their true colours. This wasn't supposed to be a nation borne of chokers, either on the pitch or off. As Czechoslovakia they'd not only faced Soviet tanks trolling down their main thoroughfares, but they'd also faced the mighty Krauts (Western conference) in a penalty shootout to decide the winner of EURO 76 and beat their sorry arse, with Antonin Panenka not only single-handedly inventing the arsiest penalty-take ever (wait for the keeper to dive then casually dink it over where he was) but busting it out at the most astonishingly ballsy moment to do so. The Germans had never lost a penalty shootout in a major tournament. Nor have they lost one since.
But this side - despite being packed to the rafters with serious talent like Poborsky (who went on to join Man U), Pavel Nedved (Lazio), Patrik Berger (Liverpool) and Vladimir Smicer (likewise) - followed up their giant-killing performance at EURO 96 by not even making it through qualifying for the 1998 World Cup in France (annihilated by Spain and the Yugos in their qualifying group) or four years later in Japorea (where they qualified for a sudden-death playoff against the might of Belgium yet somehow conspired to lose.) In between they made it to EURO 2000 but only for the duration of the first round. It wasn't until EURO 2004 that they actually got their act together to put in a decent performance, and with young 'uns like big stupid Jan Koller, Milan Baros and Petr Cech joining the team, they were justifiably named with the favourites after ripping through their qualifying group unbeaten, outpointing the Dutch. The Oranje made it through the sudden-death playoffs and came back for more, being drawn in the same group in the tournament proper, but it was more pain for the drug-addled pancake molesters: the Czechs beat the Dutch 3-2 in a bullshit comeback for the ages, won all three games, rained in seven goals and generally went into the quarters looking All That and quite a bit more. They smashed three goals in barely fifteen minutes past the Danes in the second half of their quarter final match in Porto. All that stood between them and another EURO final appearance against the hosts was a semi against Greece. Unfancied, untalented, utterly rubbish Greece. The new kings of catenaccio, of ugly one-nils and ten men behind the ball. Who scored less than a fat man on Lesbos and entertained as much as any of the 63 episodes of Acropolis Now, i.e. not fucking much.
Needless to say, despite rocking up with more attacking weapons than an inter-club meeting of the Coffin Dodgers and Hells Angels MCs, the Choke Republic couldn't score a goal in 90 minutes of regulation or 30 more of extra time. The Greeks thefted the winner a minute into the second period of extra time, and went on to bore their way to another 1-0 victory in the final. The Czechs had again come up small on the big stage. They'd promised the world and delivered an atlas. Still they'd make that up at the next tournament, surely?
World Cup 2006: qualified through the back door to the back door to the tradesman's entrance by winning a last-chance two-legged playoff having not qualified either directly from their group, or as one of two best-performing group runners-up. After all that, punted in first round after losing horribly to Ghana, despite smashing the Seppos 3-0 in their first game and being pronounced Tournament Dark Horses for the umpteenth tournament ever. (Also lost to Italy, but hey, all the cool kids did that at Germany '06.)
And now, EURO 2008. Qualified comfortably. Dispatched the Swiss clinically. Beaten by the Portuguese but nowhere near as seriously as the scoreline would suggest. A win against the Turks, who'd done nothing since the previous millennium, would guarantee progression which noone seriously doubted. Least of all once they'd gotten themselves two goals up by the second half. And then... not one, not two, but three goals to the Turks. Wikipedia is calling it the Miracle of Geneva, at least until someone from Prague or Brno cries to Wiki and gets the story deleted. You can change Wikipedia but you can't change history. Once more, the Choke Republic have auto-asphyxiated their way out of a major tournament, faster than... [Michael Hutchence reference removed for legal reasons]
Yet again, it's all gone tits-up for the Czechs
Tomorrow morning: the Group of Fatal Unsurvivable Morgue-Flavoured Rigor Mortis Inducing Death On Toast With Poppadoms And Salad And Yoghurt And Shit... And A Hot Dog. Meaning France-Italy and Romania-Netherlands B, who given they've qualified piss-easily might not be bothered turning up at all, gifting the Remains second spot in the group and meaning one less 'big' team in the mix for the Dutchies to have to negotiate around later in the tourney. Then again, having put seven goals past the pair of them, it's hard to see them being that concerned if they do end up having to play the wogs or the frogs again...
The Doctor is OUT.
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