Portugal All the Way; Group B is Going Down; Italy Got Screwed; Czech Rep. Will Reach Finals
It was an exciting first round. Greece upset an all-star Portugal squad, but then Portugal came back to beat the all-star of all-star squads Spain.
England and France passed through as expected, but both teams have weak moments and both nearly got upset by a hard fighting Croatian team.
Group C was just painful. No one likes to see a three-way tie decided by goals, and in my opinion Italy got screwed (more on that later).
Group D was a bit surprising with Czech Republic coming away with three wins. This was, in my opinion, the strongest group of opponents with Germany, Netherlands, and a young but strong Bulgarian team. No one was writing off the Czechs to begin with, but for them to upset both Germany and Netherlands should have the Scandanavians shaking even in the Portuguese heat.
Asides from cheering on my favorite European team, the Euro Cup is exciting for me because it can be a good predictor of which young players could end up being the stars in the next World Cup. These include 19-year old Cristiano Ronaldo (freshly of Portugal after naturalizing from Brasil) who got a goal and an assist in 141 minutes of play, 21-year old Antonio Cassano of Italy with two goals in 186 minutes of play, and finally 18-year old Wayne Rooney of England leading the ENTIRE tournament with four goals and an assist to boot in 230 minutes of play. Iker Casillas at only 23-years old (That's super young for a starting goalkeeper) also had a great performance, despite his team's dissapointments. He only gave up two goals and had 8 saves. Watch for these guys to lead Portugal, Italy, England, and Spain, respectively, to strong competition in Germany in 2006.
Other "more experienced" players that impressed me were Puyol of Spain who not only had 25 tackles but an assist and a few nice shots on goal (as a defender). Henrik Larsson (Go Celtic FC!) of Denmark had three goals and an assist. Nesta and Buffon for Italy also led a great defense for Italy, as they only gave up two goals the whole tournament, one of which was on a penalty kick.