Final Group Previews

Although we are still in the preview section with a look today at Groups E and F, the tournament has already started in a way that nobody could have wished for.

In the first half of the Denmark vs Finland game, the Danish star player, Christian Erikson suddenly collapsed to the turf and had to be resuscitated. Our thoughts and prayers are with him and we wish him a speedy recovery, the match was delayed for ninety minutes and then continued with the obviously distracted Vikings losing one nothing to the Reindeer riders.

I do not think any predictions for this game should count, the Vikings are going to have to really pull out of the stops to get over this difficult situation. Do you think the game should have been played out last night or should it have been put off until today? Please put your thoughts in the comments section.

Group E contains Spain, Sweden, Slovakia and Poland. The favourites in this group are obviously the flamenco dancing bull fighters. They won the tournament handsomely in 2012 beating the spaghetti munchers four nil in the final thus making them both World and European champions at the time.

The current squad is not as good but are still very entertaining on their day, they recently thrashed the Shermans six nil !!! 

Their preparations for the tournament were thrown into disarray when their captain Sergio Biscuits tested positive for Corona forcing the whole squad into isolation. Amazingly the players had not been vaccinated, another player soon tested positive although he has since tested negative, but they have had to set up an alternative camp site with different players including under 21 players.

Interestingly enough their first game is against flat pack IKEA on Monday and guess what, they also returned a positive test. The whole Swedish squad has not been vaccinated but for altruistic reasons. They claimed it would not be right for them to receive the vaccine before the old and infirm, noble indeed but bloody stupid. Perhaps the forty or so people involved in the squad not being vaccinated would help speed up the rate of vaccinations back home. Anyway, I said in the opening preview that this would be something to watch out for and here it is already.

From a footballing point of view, the Castanet playing artistes should have too much flair for the square rather boring Volvo drivers. As we said with the Swiss, if you want reliability a Volvo is as good a bet as a Swiss watch, but it is not very exciting to drive.

Poland are led by Robert Lewandowski, arguably one of the best attacking players of this generation, he has just broken the record for the number of goals scored in a season in the Sherman football league, forty one in total, a remarkable achievement, expect the Poles to do well.

The last team in this group is Slovakia, a small landlocked country surrounded by the aforementioned Poland, Hungary, Ukraine and Austria and of course the Czech Republic all fellow competitors in the tournament. Its population is only five and a half million, but as we mentioned with the Czech Republic they have a good footballing pedigree, however do not expect to see too much from them and they should be making an early exit.

We conclude the preview section with what most people before the tournament considered to be the group of death. I argued otherwise but after the Eriksen incident last night, my argument has lost its validity and this is definitely the hardest group in the tournament.

Firstly, we have the reigning world champions, les escargot, whose team is so strong in every position that on paper they should walk away with the cup without breaking much of a sweat.

Then we have the current holders of the European title, Portugal, who happened to beat Les Bleus in the final five years ago and who are once again led by CR7 and his gang and if anything are a much better team than they were then. Les Bleu will be looking for payback.

Next up is the Shermans, with their Nationalmannschaft, who just the mere mention of their name sends shivers down the spines of most football fans around the world. The Shermans have won three Euros and four world cups, you can never count them out. We will repeat the old dictum, Football is a simple game played for ninety minutes and at the end the Shermans always win.

Lastly, we have the Magyars of Hungary, a team that back in the 1950's changed the way football was played but has since fallen on hard times and in reality should be there to just make up the numbers in this group. The Magyars only hope is that the other three teams will take them lightly as they concentrate on each other and allow them to sneak in a result somewhere.

Forget whatever the two main leaders of the parties in the EU try to tell us, les frogs do not like the Le Boche, it is an enmity that goes back to the Germanic tribes raiding across the Rhine into Gaul more than two thousand years ago. To be honest the feeling is mutual. Sauerkraut does not go with snails so the matchup between the two this Tuesday will be a tasty affair.

I leave you with this old favourite from the 1982 world cup of German goalkeeper Harald Schumaker trying to decapitate Dominique Battiston to show the love between the two teams.