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Published: Sat, 28 June 2008, 07:00, also tagged: europe, sport, football, germany, final, vienna, soccer, spain, turkey, austria, uefa, euro 2008, european cup, андрей аршавин, andrei arshavin
The Euro 2008 football tournament is finally wrapping up with the final to be played in Vienna this Sunday.
Spain comfortably beat a disappointing Russia, a team which promised so much but just simply didn’t deliver. Russian team play and energy was non-existent in comparison to their previous two matches against the Netherlands and Sweden. One key reason I believe is because their man of the moment, Andrei Arshavin, wasn’t really involved in the game. On previous matches he was orchestrating the Russian play, this time he was silent.
Spain hasn’t won a major football honour since 1964 when they won the European Cup. Amazingly, this is even further back than England’s victory in the 1966 World Cup.
Published: Mon, 23 June 2008, 17:51, also tagged: sport, football, italy, germany, soccer, netherlands, spain, portugal, euro 2008, penalties, oranje, андрей аршавин, andrei arshavin, gus hiddink
Gus Hiddink's impressive Russian team produced the upset of the tournament by beating a strong Netherlands side 3 goals to 1. The Dutch were simply outplayed in every area of the game and the Russians on fire. Great team effort, the Russian players didn't appear to tire, and Andrei Arshavin's talent was something to behold.
For the Oranje it must be a bitter pill to swallow after brushing aside two teams that reached the FIFA World Cup final in 2006. I honestly can't take anything away from Russia's performance, they were the better team.
The Spain, Italy quarter final promised a lot, but delivered next to nothing. Italy must bare most of the criticism for a poor using defence minded tactics. I wonder if it was actually their plan to play for penalties, which means the Spanish victory in the penalty shoot-out is all the sweeter.
Published: Wed, 18 June 2008, 16:32, also tagged: europe, sport, football, italy, germany, soccer, netherlands, spain, turkey, portugal, croatia, uefa, euro 2008
We’ve reached the quarter final stage of the tournament with Portugal, Germany, Croatia, Turkey, Netherlands, Russia, Spain and Italy left from the 16 teams.
Here are my predictions:
Published: Tue, 10 June 2008, 14:16, also tagged: europe, sport, football, italy, germany, holland, soccer, netherlands, poland, spain, uefa, euro 2008
The Euro 2008 football tournament is well underway. It started slow, but the past two days has provided us with some fantastic football.
The Netherlands (Holland) / Italy game, in which the Netherlands performed exceptional, especially on the counter attack and earned a well deserved (regardless of the legitimacy of Ruud van Nistelrooy’s opening goal) 3 points from a 3 – 0 victory. Italy didn’t play particularly bad, but what can you do when a team with the ability of the Netherlands’ make the most of their chances?
The victory for the Netherlands puts them in pole position in “The Group of Death”, in which two qualifying spots will be contested by the Netherlands, France, Italy and Romania. This group is a very strong candidate for producing the team which could take the cup.
Published: Mon, 9 June 2008, 05:19, also tagged: travel, holiday, vacation, lada, samara, avtovaz, togliatti, volga river, автоваз, tolyatti, samara oblast, тольятти
I haven’t recently updated this blog as much as I would like, due mainly in part to visiting the wonderful city of Togliatti (Tolyatti / Толья́тти) in Russia.
To an Englishman, Russia is a fascinating place; some things are exactly how you’d expect them to be and others totally different. Many things are just like here in the UK, but the cultural influences still seem to remain strong, old Russia traditions are alive and kicking and people are patriotic, something I would like many Brits to be outside the realm of football.
Togliatti is situated in Samara Oblast along the Volga River (the largest river in Europe by many metrics); it’s an impressive sight, the huge deep forests that line much of its banks are like nothing you get to see in much of the UK. One species of tree was seeding at the time which had seeds like little fluffy snow balls. I was told the tree is especially good at improving the air quality in industrial areas; however the down side is that the “fur” the trees seeds are transported by are damaging to peoples breathing and because of this it is actually illegal to grow the tree in Europe.