Euro 2008, a sort of regional version of the World Cup soccer tournament is going on right now in Austria/Switzerland. Like the World Cup, it's held every four years for the qualifying European national teams. I really get excited by it, and Germany is favored to win the tournament, even over reigning world champions Italy.
Germany won their first game against Poland on Sunday 2-0.
Greece won this tournament last time, so really anything can happen. Greece came out of nowhere and is not considered to be a soccer nation of any reckoning, so it was definitely a big deal. Czech Republic and Croatia tend to play pretty well at the tournament level, as do France and Italy, who were in the last World Cup final. England did not even qualify - England has good club teams but they always seem to fizzle as a national team.
It's fun for me to watch this also because ESPN is suddenly populated with a bunch of commentators speaking in Irish and English accents. Soccer commentary by Americans is just terrible - they're all like John Madden pointing out the obvious: "Well that was a terrible collision between those two players - Soccer can be pretty rough!" Er, yeah, thanks. The foreigners are going to give you those great tidbits - they'll recall some game in the 1970's that influenced the creation of the regulation that was just enforced on the field. For example. Ahem.
It really makes me wish I'd have learned Spanish; I'm guessing they probably know what they're talking about too.
[photo from ESPN.com]
No comments:
Post a Comment