Death approaches in Group B

Last night brought us the best candidate so far for goal of the tournament, scored by he Polish captain the draw with Russia, if you missed it. Check it out on www.101greatgoals.com the best site for goals on the web. In the other game the jokes were flowing as quickly as the goals as the Greeks quickly fell behind 2-0, the English commentator started talking about the Greek deficit. At half times as the Czech fans were jumping up and down in celebration, he made another joke about the Greeks facing bouncing Czechs. Group A is intriguingly poised and all the teams can still qualify, so it will be all to play for on Saturday night. It happens in almost every major tournament to one of the fancied sides who are not doing as well as expected, stories start to circulate about arguments between players, leading to feuding camps. This year it is the turn of Portugal, with reports emanating from the Portuguese of a clash between Ronaldo (no surprise there) and Nani on the other side, with most of the players siding with Nani. The pressure is on Portugal to win, otherwise they will be going home especially as they still have to play the Dutch. The Danes are in heaven, with a draw giving them a chance of beating the odds and cheating the group of death. As you know, Denmark is the home to “Probably the best lager in the World” and that will be flowing in the streets if they get a good result tomorrow. My Danish friend, Danny, still does not rate his team, but it is great to see him smiling so. I’ll go for Denmark here. I have to make a public correction pointed out to me by an observant reader, in my last post about Holland, I wrote they never won anything. Well they did in fact win Euro 88, beating the Soviet Union 3-0 with one of the best ever goals scored by Marco Van Basten. Thank You to Andrew for that. Holland against Germany, the Dutch are in trouble having lost the so called easy game and now they face the old enemy, this is the biggest game in Dutch football, and it has never ended in a 0-0 draw (good for us). We have to go back to 1974 and the world cup final. The Dutch were favourites to win with Cruyff and Neeskins orchestrating some magical moments during the finals, but in the final although they took the leader, they lost 2-1 in the end to a Germany led by “The Kaiser” Franz Beckenbauer . Check out the highlights here on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsnK_4IWBWc You have got to love the German hairstyles, much better than today’s tattooed warriors. It took the Dutch until 1988 and the Euros which they as I wrote won before they beat the old Nemesis. This game is not like say, England, France, where the rivalry is felt on both sides, the Germans do not seem to be bothered very much by the Dutch at least in a historical sense and because of this they are not feeling any pressure. The NationalMannSchaft is going to roll on towards the next round.