Day 12 review Sweden 0 Russia 2 (prediction: 1-2) We’ve seen some fantastic performances in the competition so far, not least from Spain and the Netherlands, but Russia put in a stunning shift against Sweden to run out comfortable winners. Arshavin and Zhirkov were the star performers, Pavluchenko saving his best performance for tonight too. […]
Day 11 review France 0 Italy 2 (predicted: 0-2) Time restricted my analysis of this game but it panned out largely like I expected: Italy were the stronger team, deservedly won and France looked completely unmotivated. In the wake of the defeat Lilian Thuram (dropped for the game) and Claude Makelele retired (again), Raymond Domenech […]
Day 8 review Sweden 1 Spain 2 (prediction: 2-1) I’m a prideful creature and I really don’t like being wrong. I put my neck on the block by predicting a Sweden win and, honestly, I thought they were the most likely winners until Zlatan Ibrahimovic went off injured (presumably) at half time. At that point […]
Day 7 review Italy 1 Romania 1 (predicted: 2-1) The group of death became the group of pigeons with a cat amongst them after a second Romanian stalemate left them ahead of the single-pointed Italy and France in Group C. Amongst my predictions yesterday were that we’d see a lot of Italian changes – and […]
Day 4 review Spain 4 Russia 1 (prediction: 1-0) It maybe wasn’t a huge stretch to suggest that Spain would overcome Russia but I did not see it being by such a wide margin in the end. David Villa struck a hat-trick and Cesc Fabregas grabbed a fourth in the dying minutes with the impressive […]
Day 3 review Romania 0 France 0 (predicted: 0-0) Tepid and fairly uninspiring, if this is what the group of death is to be like then I may just switch Group C off. Romania cannot be faulted for their workrate and organisation – the back four were very impressive and left-back Razvan Rat kept Franck […]
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