Preview number one Groups A and B

 

One of the first things that football fans look for when the draw for a tournament is made, is which group is going to be labelled as the so called “group of death”. The general consensus for this tournament was that it was group F consisting of Les Frogs, the bottle corks, the Shermans and the Magyars. We do not do consensus here, in my opinion Group A, which includes Italy, Turkey, Switzerland and Wales is the true “group of death” and I will now explain why.

First of all, they are all good teams, let’s start with the Cornettos, they have a long history of doing well in the big tournaments, they like to make offers other teams find difficult to refuse. They are three time finalists in the Euros and six times in the world cup, however they are notoriously slow starters and often just make it through by the skin of their teeth.

The yodeling Swiss are a solid outfit, what one would expect from a Swiss product, nothing flashy but efficient. The Welsh choir boys had a fantastic tournament last time round making it into the semi-finals and they cannot be discounted this time with the perhaps soon to be retiring and future professional golfer Gareth Bale looking to make this tournament his swansong.

This leaves us with the Turks, they are the youngest squad by average age and lack experience, but they qualified second behind France in their group including a win over France and had an excellent defensive record.

Remember this now, a good defense is what wins you titles, you can have all the attacking prowess in the world, but if you are weak at the back which is not something which is in the nature of Turks then you do not stand a chance. That highlighted phrase should be a mantra which is often repeated.

These countries all share beautiful mountain landscapes and I have been fortunate to visit them all. There seems to be a correlation between the mountains and a love of singing at least in three of the four and the Turks tend to sing for different reasons.

The Turks are probably under pressure from home where expectations will be high especially from their Ottoman style wanna be emperor Mr. Erdogan (the g is silent) who wants this team to restore former glories to a nation going through difficult times. Success in an international tournament is a wonderful panacea for internal woes.

So now you know why this group is so difficult, there is no team with a glaring weakness and they can all take points off each other.  As I have to make some form of prediction and of course be proved wrong, I will go out on a limb and say that Italy and Turkey will go through and that this might be one of the groups where two teams go out, if not then Switzerland over Wales. The boyos will be making an early return to the valleys and their long suffering sheep.

Group B is slightly easier to call in that Finland are some way weaker (watch then now qualify) than the other three teams in this group, namely Belgium one of the favourites for the tournament and also the current world number ranked team. Denmark and the Russian Bear close out this group.

Now Finland and the bear have quite a history, you may not know that in 1939 Soviet Russia invaded Finland and were given a bloody nose by the Finns despite the disparity in the size of their military forces.

It is also interesting to note that Finland will face Russia in St Petersburg, which in Soviet times was known as Leningrad due to the fact that Lenin arrived back in Russia in 1917 to launch the revolution at no other than the Finland railway station which is located in….. St Petersburg. Aficionados of cold war novels will no doubt have heard of it.

This time however, the Bear will be too strong for the plucky Finns. The Brussel sprouts will hope that this time they can keep the wind at their backs all the way to the final. In the world cup in 2018 they lost to Les Frogs in the semifinal despite being one of the most attractive teams to watch, remember the mantra from above.  They should canter to first place in this group, even with the injury sustained by their number one star Kevin De Bruyne, who suffered a broken nose and eye socket playing for his club in the recent champion’s league final. It was not pretty as you can see.

 

The last team in this group is the Viking Norsemen from “wonderful wonderful Copenhagen” as the song goes. The Danes have a great goalkeeper in Kasper (he is not a friendly ghost) Schmeichel son of the legendary Peter, and a very solid defensive unit consisting of rather large man mountains. They also have the delightfully named Thomas Delaney who plays in midfield ensuring the Paddy’s are represented at the tournament in some way despite both their teams not qualifying.

Belgium and Denmark to go through along with the Russian Bear in third place sweating on whether they will make it through or not,

Tomorrow we shall take a look at Groups C and D which of course include EnGerLand and Wee Bonnie Scotland.