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12 Jun 2008

euro 2008: we're still there

The turtle awards this specimen of Anacamptis pyramidalis to the Austrian football team:

For being the better team by far against Poland today, and for fighting on till they finally scored the equalizer. So a draw only, and this in a game where we should have won easily, where we had great chances of scoring two or three goals at least in the first half only.

Well, it has to be said that we didn't play against the Polish team alone but also against the referee; nevertheless this should have been an easy victory for us, and even though I write this I am proud of our team which seems to be still to young and naive to win games like this one. But they have at least saved our honour, scored a goal and won a point.

We now have to win against the Germans in the last game of our group, else we're out - while the Croats are through and the Poles will have to win (with as many goals difference as possible) their last game against Croatia and hope for us to win over Germany with only one goal difference. This is so because, surprisingly, the Croats won against the Germans today: Croatia was better throughout and Germany didn't look like they could march through to the finals this time - not nearly. When looking back now, as we did have at least one good half against the Croats, the Germans aren't out of reach for our boys, we might still win and go through to the quaters.