Euro 2008

worst case scenario for England would be something like:

England
Germany
Denmark
Belgium
Hungary
Belarus
Faroe Islands

France
Spain
Ukraine
Scotland
Lithuania
Macedonia
Azerbaijan

exciting!

Group Two
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This is really exciting, BBC.

Group A
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Group B
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Group C
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Group D
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Group E
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Group F
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Group G
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I feel almost certain that England are destined for this group

B
FAROE ISLANDS
GEORGIA
LITHUANIA
SCOTLAND
UKRAINE
ITALY
FRANCE

C
MALTA
MOLDOVA
HUNGARY
BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA
NORWAY
TURKEY
GREECE

D
SAN MARINO
CYPRUS
WALES
REP OF IRELAND
SLOVAKIA
GERMANY
CZECH REPUBLIC

E
ANDORRA
FYR MACEDONIA
ESTONIA
ISRAEL
RUSSIA
CROATIA
ENGLAND

F
LIECHTENSTEIN
NORTHERN IRELAND
ICELAND
LATVIA
DENMARK
SPAIN
SWEDEN

G
LUXEMBOURG
BELARUS
ALBANIA
SLOVENIA
BULGARIA
ROMANIA
NETHERLANDS

England came spectacularly close to being in Group D there. Would've been more exciting than Group E I must say.

Norway = HELLA LUCKY yay! I mean, Turkey aren't easy or anything, but they aren't Spain or Italy (or even Germany maybe) -- and drawing Greece as a top seed makes me send many warm thoughts to the Greek Euro 2004 team who put them in that position.

A fiver says the England-Israel game will be disrupted by Guardian readers waving Palestinian flags who haven't noticed that professional footballers get excused from National Service in Israel, thus meaning that by playing for their country they're actually getting off house-bulldozing duties.

Group E looks harder than the World Cup qualifying group to me.

That's a great draw for England, no one terrific at all, though obviously only one looks like a total walkover, I imagine. The rest of the British Isles is totally fucked in spectacularly bad draws.

Losing an extra place through joint hosts, plus the fact that the two countries removed are mediocre ones, makes this an unusually tough-looking draw generally. Imagine putting Switzerland and Austria in and removing an Italy, France, Germany or England, then offering an extra place.

urgh.......

http://www.bigcampaign.org/gallerypitchinvasion.html

I know, they tried something similar a couple of years ago at Man Utd Big Cup game and got nowhere, but I assure you that they will try something.

And I wouldn't be too shocked if some newspaper has a column in it tomorrow saying we shouldn't be playing them at all, which will contain the word "millionaires" at least once.

But why is that? That's something the next England manager needs to address and hopefully resolve.

now i know why tigers eat their young, you know?

Disappointing amount of oven cleaning discussion during the match, ILX.

Best tournament in quite a while (thanks to Belgians and British not participating, perhaps ;-) )

This steak still has marks from where the jockey whipped it

The stickman - you should ask StanM over to co-eat it. Perhaps.

What is the Spanish for "yahh trick yahh"?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erLcKsLO9YQ

i've been in and out of the oven, have I missed Marcel?

Don't look at me, how the hell could I kno?

no

So if Russia wins tomorrow, Mike from work wins the office pool outright.

If Spain beats Germany in the final, I win outright.
If Germany wins, Jeff will win, UNLESS Fernando Torres scores four more goals than Klose and Villa combined for the duration of the tournament.

Pick now! Who will win?! Mike, Jeff, or me?! (Note that Russia doesnt even need to beat Germany in the final for Mike to win)

Note: I don't care who you want to win, just who you think WILL win. I can't separate the threee of us.

-- Will M., Wednesday, 25 June 2008 21:48 (4 days ago) Link

germany will win. jeff will win.

-- Weasel Diesel, Wednesday, 25 June 2008 22:49 (4 days ago) Link

YAY ME! BOO WEASEL!

$80 CANADIAN DOLLARS. IT'S LIKE SIX EUROS! ALL MINE!

That'll buy you a wheelbarrowful of condoms, you happy sir you.

Jake Humphrey makes Rishi Persad look characterful.

no marcel

bye motty

Le sigh.

so where's the 2010 thread?

I'd start it, but, y'know, palpable sense of loss, realisation that next to that club football is gonna be kinda dogshit, etc. That and I have to mop the floor.

Already here:

World Cup 2010 Qualification thread

Zum Schneider - your bar staff and, to some extent, clientele took a hell of a beating.

Coach Luis Aragones, who now steps down after four years in the job, paid tribute to Torres after the final whistle.

"Fernando is a great player for Liverpool and for our team and he can go anywhere because he has really extraordinary speed and he knows how to dribble," said the 69-year-old.

So, their time came. Which is good, because it was the right time for it - their coming that is. We thought it was their time last time, and times before that, but, nope, it didn't come - their time that is.
But this time, the time, their coming, it all came together. The pundits have been getting it right for twenty years.

Germany could still do this! Never write them off!

lol

Last night I decided Joachim Low looked like Alan Vega. A quick GIS reveals I was very drunk.

I was a bit disappointed with the final but the Spanish were deserved winners. Best tournament in a long time.

Fabregas looks like Britney Spears. It's the eyes.

Good tourneymount. Not quite as good as Euro 2000.

You have a point, about the eyes, Mike.

And of course it doesn't match 2000, but I'm glad it's made people happy.

Does anyone look like Suzanne Vega?

I was just looking through my football records (no, not the one with the application form to meet Kevin Keegan) and found this exchange, a spontaneous marvel je crois, from the end of World Cup 1998, in the Paris studio:

Hansen: It'll be mayhem in the streets.
Lynam: Well ... I like a bit of mayhem now and again.

Surely Motson deserves a proper record of his last international final.

1. "Thanks for those kind words, Gary, though before you make me sound as old as Methuselah I should point out that I wasn’t born when this stadium was built"

2. asking us to indluge him with European memories, from 1976 (only time Germans beaten on pens) through 1984 la la, 1988 Van Basten, 2000 the French … we know all this, but it seems a meaningful gesture for him.

3. "He’s started so he’ll <heh> finish", of the ref who also handled the opening game: "I don’t know if he’s a mastermind of a referee, but he’s here on merit."

4. "Fernando Torres of Liverpool has put Spain ahead in the final" -- just to get the antiPremiercentric hackles up.

5. BY the way, Lawro’s assertion that "you just know that Germany will have one gilt-edged chance before the end" turns out not really to be true, BY the way.

6. "Spanish subtlety has triumphed over Teutonic tenacity" - he fumbles the end of this, the kind of moment that almost makes you think it's a good thing he's on a farewell tour.

7. "The senors have become the seniors, of European football!"

8. Platini (who looked wrly pleased at the goal) beaming as he hands Ballack a loser's medal; Lawro: "I don't think he's happy that Platini keeps smiling", Motson, uncertain, "No".

9. "It’s magnificent if you’re from Real Madrid … it’s brilliant if you’re from Barcelona … it’s a vindication if you’re from Valencia or Villareal!" (correct me if I have the wrong adjectives here, or if the list was even longer -- it's a zinger if you're from Zaragoza?)

"It's lovely if you're from Liverpool."

How could I forget that?

well, that makes a round 10 anyway.

Motson seemed uncomfortably aware of his legacy

That pretentious The Life of a Fly With A Funny Accent video seemed an odd choice to end with

It was very odd, especially as the tourneymount did not, in fact, last for a month.

OK Motson's final set-pieces were prepared as a goodbye flourish, I shouldn't wonder, but for most of the game there was no sense of this at all, just a professional job. If anything, I fancy, more could have been made of it, in a very real sense. I remember Big Ron making a valedictory speech to Brian Moore late in the 1998 world cup final, followed by Mooro's embarrassed, touched 'Thanks, old friend'. But Motson isn't really finished yet, in a footballing sense, so perhaps some FA Cup Final will be the moment for it.

It was very odd, especially as the tourneymount did not, in fact, last for a month.

Yes! The foreign fly said itself that it was born on the 7th June! The stupid cunt.

Motson's just doing highlight commentaries from now until whenever he goes, I think, though I suppose given what the BBC actually has rights to as of next season he doesn't have that much choice. He sounded pretty bewildered at a couple of points last night.

It seems as though Steve Wilson is being groomed as his successor rather than Jonathan Pearce, which is a shame because Wilson seems like, for want of a better term, a fuckin plant pot

Unless it's all a smokescreen for Barry Davies to return in a firestorm of clipped haughtiness

oh, I want to walk into that firestorm.

: - O

http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/44793000/jpg/_44793400_aragonesnew_afp_220.jpg

it has to be said, motson does wholly deserve some sort of lifetime achievement award for services to "heh".

... heh

http://i240.photobucket.com/albums/ff169/brumspur/lehmann.gif

haha so glad someone else spotted this! i will miss mad jens, thnks fr th mmrs big man

http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u129/axiertxo/fotos/2rojqfmjpg.gif

skillz

:D we need a british santorum.jpg, jens involved for sure

ok capdevila having been anonymous all tournament finally comes to the party

Quick question from an American, for something I'm copy-editing at work: It's just "Euro 2008," right? Would it ever make sense to call it "the Euro 2008," as in "Spain won the Euro 2008"?

no 'the'
unless you want to write 'the 2008 European Championship' or similar

Right, that's what I thought.

Source: some British guy on the Internet

If you want to use 'the', the correct thing to say would be simply "The Euro's". Otherwise, it's "Spain won Euro 2008".

xxxpost

you might want to lose the apostrophe if you want that version to be correct.

Heh yeah, sorry. "Source: some Dutch guy on the Internet" :)