Euro Round-up

I forgot I was going to write this post. The Euro 2008 was a fantastic tournament, with great goals galore, heroes, goats, underdogs, last minute wins, awful defending, worse refereeing, and in the end, a worthy champion. ¡Viva España! God I love watching their creative, attacking play; I hope you got to see at least some of it. As a side note, it is a sin in Spain to be boring; club side Real Madrid have twice fired their manager for being boring despite him winning the Spanish title in his first season!

I loved the small stadiums of Austria and Switzerland because they really held in the crowd noise, especially for the awesome Turkish fans. They had all the passion of an Asian fanbase, without the creepy chanting in unison. I best remember when the sent up an incredible, passionate song to rally the team when they were down 2-0 to the Czechs. Really, why don't all fans do this? When you're losing the game, that's when you need the positive energy of the fans the most! I still feel Turkey never would have won the game without them.

My predictions reached an all time low. I picked neither finalist, and one of the four semi-finalists. I predicted Portugal to win it all, and for them to beat the Dutch. And my group stage predictions were just as bad. Shows what I know, which isn't as much as I'd like.

Here is the Spanish call of the winning goal, an odd delight. There's the usual screaming of ¡Gòl!, also some weird undulating background noise, and then a cheesy Japanese game show type music celebration. And then the guys screaming in the background! Are they always there? Do they just comment as the game goes on, like guys in a bar? Do they only scream for goals? I wonder.

Euro 2008

In case you haven't noticed, a great soccer tournament is going on in Europe. The Euro is essentially the World Cup, but with only European teams. So, all the great teams, minus Argentina and Brazil. I've been obsessed with it, as you might have guessed, but you're typical sports fan should get a kick out of much of it. Case in point, today the Czechs play the Turkish, winner advances, loser goes home. That is only fun. With national pride on the line, it's fantastic.

The next four days are the end of the group stages, which is exactly like the World Cup, and Thursday the quarterfinals start. There will be great games, and the final on the 29th should be awesome. If you like the World Cup, at least give this tourney a shot. It's all the nationalism that the Olympics used to give us, now in convenient soccer form.