G.Man wrote:


Ah yes I have fond memories of this game in Euro 96...

I had a really good nap for 119 minutes and woke up just as Vlaovic streaked away to score at the end..

It has to be in contention for the most boring international ever,along with the 1994 WC final

I still think France might come good this time round. I quite fancy them to beat Spain tomorrow, and if they do they can go on and win the whole thing.

ooh aah wrote:


Yes, and an absolute classic.

I've got money on France at 11-1 and Italy e/w at 14s. I was more confident about both a week ago than I am now.

The quarter-finals so far are seriously testing any notion that this tournament might be a classic one.

We now have gone 310 minutes, plus injury time, since the last goal from open play was scored.

This has turned from a decent tournament into a snoozefest of incompetent finishing and tight defending.

A tournament only dalliance could love.

To be honest, G-man, at this stage of the tournament, once a game goes towards extra-time, there is a high possibility that it is going to go to penalties even though Spain tried to stop that last night.

Equally, Spain's penalty against France came from an attacking move in the 91st minute when they were 1-0 up which somewhat contradicts the idea of them protecting leads.

So that leaves two 0-0 matches, one of which involved Italy (albeit the new rather more attacking version) and England who could have had the whole 310 minutes to themselves and had no goal.

You can have two 0-0s in a Match of the Day and it still be a classic. Having said that, it wouldn't surprise me if the remaining two matches end as 0-0s decided on penalties, in which case, call me back and I will agree with you

310 minutes is three and a half games. That is a long time.

Having said that, last night's game was quite enjoyable.

Yes, I thought that the game last night was technically excellent by both sides.

If they're going to have a new ball for each of these tournaments, they should at least agree to raise the crossbar by six inches. We'd have had a humdinger of a tournament then. The scores would have read like a 1970s New Years Day classified results list.

Or widen the penalty area by half a dozen yards each side so crosses would land in the box sometimes.

Last night's game was good at the beginning - when Portugal were turning it on a bit and having a go - and good at the end, when Spain were utterly dominant. The stuff in the middle was overpoweringly tedious, not least because of the woeful finishing.

But we're gonna need something explosive tonight and on Sunday for this tournament to merit any 'classic' status it might have promised earlier on.

That was alright. The group match betwen the two finalists bodes well for a decent encounter on Sunday too i think.

Have there been no mental matches or did I miss one?

Portugal v Denmark and England v Sweden were the most mental but not sure if they really qualify.

Maybe the first five minutes of Ukraine v France is as close as we've got.

I missed it but a lot of people say that the England/Denmark was the most exciting but I don't know whether that amounts to mental per se. The descriptions sounded pretty mental

England/Denmark certainly has the benefit of being completely imaginary.

An engrossing rather than an enthralling tournament. Early momentum killed off by the double whammy of the England/Italy and Portugal/Spain scoreless draws. People have bemoaned the lack of 'mental' games to liven things up, but I think it's simpler than that - there just don't seem to have been many contests. Germany beat all and sundry until they met the Italians, who were in turn done over by Spain, in a final that was over as a contest by the hour mark. I guess the thoughts of Europe's top coaches will now turn with even greater resolve to the issue of how to counter Spain's possession football.

Total goals in the end 76, pretty much in keeping with the last two. A shame, because the tournament began at a hell of a canter in that respect, there were 46 goals in the first 16 games, then just 30 in the last 15.

Truly memorable games: well the final will remembered as being Spain's masterclass, and eulogised much as the last time a good side stuffed Italy in a major final. Italy-Germany in the semis was a cracking game too, shame Germany's late goal didn't come ten minutes earlier.

Other than that, well, not really, no. Each of the groups had tense deciding final matches, but after all most went the way of the bigger teams, with the exception of Greece upsetting Russia, and after it's all over, it almost feels like an anticlimax when a Euros produces pretty much the tournament most people had scripted before it began, if the biggest "shock" was Italy beating Germany.

Oh Torres won the golden boot, didn't he. That was possibly the biggest shock.

Prior to the final I would have put it below average, due to the two most talked about teams prior to the event, Spain and Germany, playing less exciting football than they have in recent years. But after Spain showed they still have that in them when presented with the right opportunity, it flits back to being 3 out of 5.

If the pre-tournament favourites underwhelm, then you are looking for an unexpected team to over-perform. We had two of those in Italy and Croatia, and both had drawbacks. Croatia were good but were a bit unlucky with their group draw and so went home too early to really shift the overall perception of the event. Italy, even prior to today, had only won two matches out of five, scoring 6 goals in the process, so maybe they were not as exciting as the coverage was portraying them prior to tonights game.

One thing I think is instructive is that our thread on breakout stars has quitely died. There were very few new names or outstanding individual performances.

The final has redeem the event a bit, as that Spain performance will be remembered for a long while. Without that, it wouldn't have been very memorable at all.