EURO 2012

joined the league.

predos:

Winners: Germany
Runners up: Italy
Poland and France in the Semis
England knocked out of Group Stages by Sweden

Top goalscorer: Nando Torres

Theo will score a beautiful insane goal against a 10 men Ukraine that guarantees he'll be shitty and not live up to expectations next season.

lol 'up' to 'expectations'

Pretty sure it's Geordie from Killing Joke xxp

xpost

tom d - ricky ross = michael fassbender in prometheus

So when you subtract Ricky Ross from me you get Michael Fassbender? Cool.

Have you ever genuinely thought England would win a tournament?

I did in 2002 - I was utterly convinced it was going to happen, at least from the first round when dodgy penalty/Argentina battering on the door to no effect, and maybe before. I could watch the start of games before going to work, and seeing Owen's jammy goal against Brazil just confirmed that it was all written.

It seems kinda insane in retrospect, but when I arrived at work to find that Ronaldinho, Rivaldo et al had turned it round, my brain could not comprehend how this could have happened.

No.

nah to be fair i reckon england have a great chance of winning the carling cup with wellbeck and carroll up front.

i thought england would win euro 96 tbh

^^ aye, with the home advantage i thought they were a sure thing

I thought they might after Gary McAllister expertly aimed that penalty kick at David Seamsn's arse

i think england will get through the group stage, then somehow scrape victory from jaws of defeat through the knockout stages, john terry will be suspended for the final, england gets outplayed for 90 minutes by another team that misses 40 barn doors and england equalises in the 88th minute then the other team miss a penalty and england win euro 2012 in a penalty shootout with John Terry coming back out wearing a beefeater uniform and fuck the world

wonder if sheva has any terry beef and if he could get someone to stamp on his face in the group stage

ireland are obviously going to win. the country needs a lift and this will be our f u to our euro overlords.

darraghmac will feature in an iconic newsreel

wait, if we win don't we have to host the next one? It'll sink the country!

Nice try Ireland, the whole of the southern eurozone is in the queue ahead of you.

the country needs a lift and this will be our f u to our euro overlords.

You're sounding like a Englishman now

it's a ruddy disgrace what they've done to us.

we used to have our own pound!!!

Have you ever genuinely thought England would win a tournament?

I've never thought pre-tournament 'England *will* win this', but when England reached the semis in Euro 96 I thought they had the best chance of the four teams still in it. Euro 2004 was looking good up until Rooney's metatarsal went. World Cups of 90 and 02 didn't start off promising much, but reached a point where I thought 'if we can beat Germany/Brazil, we'll probably win the whole thing' (but that was always obviously a big if).

just got italy in the work sweep. shame they're going out in the group stages.

they are?

you've obviously not noticed ireland are in that group??

i suppose tho spain or croatia could also fail to get the 4 points to our 9

will prob depend on who concedes the most against us in the end

reading the zonal marking thing and he makes ireland sound like the most depressing team going. obv they'll win it.

also i'll never not be amazed by stats like this: Cristiano Ronaldo (146 goals in 144 games for Real Madrid)

ireland's formation featuring one player in the opposition half is p good.

Roy biting Trap's style or vice versa?

andy carroll would be so good in trapp's ireland team.

Walters should play ahead of Doyle really

loved trap's "no tracking back = ur pontius pilate" line

one must also fully commend cox maintaining remarkable journalistic sangfroid in painstakingly enumerating quite plausibly the grimmest international side in the history of football

Little over the top. We're hardly the first side to play defensively, and even if we ignore some creative players the issue of whether we could succeed with a better brand of football is debatable.

a hoy hoy tempering his challops by safe betting germany for championees

I've switched from thinking Germany would win this a month ago to thinking that they won't even get out of their group now. Possibly crystallised by so many of the BBC pundits tipping them.

Their predictions are incredibly safe. Going for an england semi makes Shearer the Stockhausen of punditry.

His reasoning? "I'm a proud Englishman".

Group winners: Russia, Germany, Spain, France
Runners-up: Poland, Netherlands, Croatia, England
QF: RUS def NED, ESP def ENG, POL def GER, FRA def CRO
SF: Russia over Spain, France over Poland
France 2-1 Russia final (Ribery, Giroud; Pavlyuchenko)

Russia haven't a hope in hell of beating Spain!

I rather hope you're right, would like to see Spain beat lesser like they ought to, just suspect they're going to struggle.

beat lesser sides*

Now I have them in the work sweep, I expect Russia to win everything.

The ZM piece on Spain was v good I thought. I wonder if Spain do try to get both Silva and Iniesta in the starting 11 on the wings. It kinda worked for City with Nasri and Silva sometimes, but then sometimes it didn't and they needed YaYa to step forward to save them. Also I haven't watched much of Spain post South Africa so interested to see what kind of role Cesc plays presuming he's even starting.

Poland beating Germany is the crazy prediction there.

I'm in two minds on Spain. On one hand I feel they're knackered and bound to hit a wall at some point. On the other they're clearly better than everyone else except maybe Germany, and they have forwards too, so might mop up at a canter.

Spain-Italy's a belter of a first game, really looking forward to that.

Russia have impressed me most in the warm up games, maybe France too fwiw, which is probably not much.

I think Pirlo might have to do too much defending vs Spain for Italy to be effective. Then again it least it won't be counter attack defending where his lack of pace would really be exposed. But seriously in their last game the positioning of the Italian full backs in a back four was woeful and was easy pickings for clever passes inside them which should suit Spain to a tee.

I haven't watched any warmups, I needed a break to try to come to this fresh. I could've done with a couple more weeks tbh, the calendar's so draining these days.

Man, I've almost been reduced to actually doing jobs around the house and gardening and crap now that there haven't been multiple games on my DVR waiting for me when I get home from work. Thank G_d for the NBA play-offs.

I hear you - I pointed myself towards the Sopranos box set instead. Kind of aggrieved the footy's going to get in the way of that now, it's effing great.