Young and talented, I agree. But not dark horses for the title. I think the team that could win by surprise is France, but they are not scoring as much as they could with all their chances, remind me of our Bayern squad. Their core is really strong and they have many young guys playing good right now. I also think Poland could play longer than expected(maybe semis) with their Dortmund guys.
I don't see how you think this Holland team is not as good. Van Persie and Robben are healthy (opposed to two years ago). The only two players that you could really say are playing worse coming in are Sneijder and Van der Vaart. So many of the players are coming in much strongers including: Huntelaar, Affelay, Van der Wiel, Elia, etc. Theres no player that really turned too old to play in the two years (de Jong is the only one close to that category) and all the young players have shown their ability to compete in some of the best leagues in Europe. Now I'm interested to see who you think the starters will or should be. Right now I think I would have my 11 at: Steklenburg Van Der Wiel Heitinga Mathijsen Pieters Van Bommel De Jong Robben Sneijder Elia Van Persie But I'd like to see Affelay start and have Huntelaar and Kuyt as the main subs.
I agree. England also could be a dark horse if they over come the injuries and their young guys play well.
How? France has proven players with experience from 1-11 and a good bench. They also been playing great in the Quali. How is Italy better?
you can say the same about italy but we have proven it with actual results. Our qualification campaign was one of our strongest yet. We were undefeated and only conceded twice. besides that we have had solid results in friendlies against Germany and actually beat Spain. France has been pretty unconvincing in many of their friendlies post WC 2010. and italy have more proven players with even more experience. the core members of the team: Buffon, De Rossi, Pirlo, Cassano are among the best in the world at their position. 3 of the 4 were a part of italy's World Cup winning side. France have a lot of unproven players. for example Mexes is inconsistent and unpredictable(in a bad way - red cards). Mexes also rarely played for milan last season.
Some may call De Rossi, Pirlo, Cassano too old, but we'll see. Mexes will be on the bench anyways, so that's not a big thing. Look at the French squad: Lloris-Glichy, Evra, Debuchy, Rami, Mexes Koscielny, Reveillere - Ribery, Malouda, Nasri, Gourcuff, M'Vila, Diarra, Malouda - Ben Arfa, Benzema, Giroud, Valbuena, Menez . I left out some smaller names, but it's still a unbelievably talented roster. These guys played in European competitions, have the right mixture of youngsters&vets and they are starting to play as a unit. I don't really see any glaring weakness if they play with the right mindset. Now Italy: Alessandro Matri, Andrea Barzagli, Andrea Pirlo, Angelo Ogbonna, Antonio Nocerino, Christian Maggio,Claudio Marchisio, Domenico Criscito, Sebastian Giovinco, Thiago Motta, Daniele De Rossi, Davide Astori, Fabio Borini ,Federico Balzaretti, Giampaolo Pazzini, Giorgio Chiellini, Ignazio Abate, Riccardo Montolivo Sorry, but most of these guys are no-names outside of Seria A and barely have experience in international competitions, I don't see them as experienced enoguh to win the title.
that is not the current italian squad. half those players have been cut. Buffon(Legend and world cup 06 winner) Pirlo (Legend and wc 06 winner) led juve to a serie a championship De Rossi (he is 28 how is that old. world cup winner in 06) Chiellini (won of worlds best CBs) Barzagli(wc 06 winner) Di Natale - he has won the scoring tittle two years in a row. 2nd this year behind ibrahimovic Thiago Motta - won the CL with Inter Antonio Cassano- 29 and has played for the likes of madrid, roma, and milan Mario Balotelli - extremely talented. poised to explode on international scene Maggio - very good rb. key for napoli's success in CL. The rest of the squad are very good and solid players who will fit in and gel very nicely with the core players. France have a very talented team. maybe not as talented as italy, but still very talented. i concede that i may be biased but i really dont believe so. im not saying italy are favorites like germany, netherlands, or spain. im saying they are dark horses like england, spain, and maybe portugal and denmark to get to a semi-final and potentially make it to the final and win it all. Italy are so unpredictable this year. if you had asked me what our chances were 8 months ago i would tell you that we for sure would reach a semi-final. but two devastating injuries to Giuseppe Rossi and Antonio Cassano have me thinking we may struggle to even get out of a very tough group C with Spain, Croatia, and Ireland. Rossi was our key striker but he tore his acl for a second time a month ago during his rehab after missing 6 months for his first acl tear. Cassano played the last 3 weeks of the season for milan, just returning after being out for 6 months after stroke and open hear surgery. It will be a fantastic Euros this year. No team is without weakness. Spain w/o villa and puyol. Germany and Holland struggling right now. France and Italy resurging with youth after pathtic world cup 2010 campaigns. And Denmark, Portugal, and russia all with very solid squads.
Have you been watching the last matches? The past 9 months form has been terrible. I think we've only won twice out of the last seven. But I guess that doesn't really matter - - we'll see how they do when it counts. I'm not too hopeful. Your starting line-up is also not going to happen. Pieters is injured and not going to the Euros. Elia has played about twice for Juventus and has therefore not been picked at all. He's been terrible the past two years basically. I do like him as a player though and hope he moves this summer. Mathijsen might also not make it due to his hamstring injury - we'll find out more this week. Doesn't seem too serious but if he's out then we're playing Bouma who is past it. I also don't agree van der Wiel is stronger. He had a great breakout season two years ago but hasn't been fantastic since the World Cup. He played terribly against Bulgaria with only 1 good cross out of 7. Afellay has been injured ALL season - he's played 140 minutes total. You could say he had had a strong 2010-2011 season but I don't think you can claim he is definitely stronger. Maybe because he has the Barca label next to his name now? I do have a feeling he will play well - he seems like the kind of player who doesn't need much time to come back into form, though it's a stretch to say it's guaranteed. Another reason is that we are in such a tough group. In the World Cup we were basically guaranteed a quarter-final spot due to the opposition we faced. In the Euros we'll have to discard Germany and/or Portugal right from the start. Not going to be easy. I wouldn't be surprised if we won it but getting knocked out in the first round seems more likely than that. In terms of the line-up mine is not too different from yours: Stekelenburg vd Wiel Heitinga Mathijsen Willems de Jong van Bommel Robben Sneijder Afellay v Persie If van Persie doesn't do the business in the next friendlies and the first group game then bench him in favour of Huntelaar. It would be frustrating to see him struggle like at the World Cup. Italy - as ever, they have a chance. Like so many teams. I think the clear favourites are Germany and Spain. Then any one team out of Italy, France or Holland can win it. I'm basically covering a third of the teams in the tournament now by mentioning those so I will leave my prediction at that
Also, does anyone remember the clear favourites for the past tournaments? Would be interesting to compare that to their actual performances. Brazil and Spain were the clear favourites for the World Cup, correct? I can't remember who was seen as the clear favourite for 2008... Who knows, maybe we will have another Greece this year!
06: Brazil (clear favorite by a mile), Argentina, England, Germany, italy were also among favorites for various reasons like history and being host nation (england always considered favorite cuz english media overrate their team all the time.) Result: only germany reached semi-finals. Argentina, England, and brazil were eliminated in quarter-finals. surprise team portugal made it to the semi-final, only to lose to france. Italy of course won vs France in final. 08: Germany(clear favorite), Spain, Italy, France favorites. (england failed to qualify) Result: France fail to qualify from group of death (italy, netherlands, france, romania), italy lose out to spain in quarter finals after penalty kicks. Spain win vs Germany in final. 10: Spain (clear favorite), Germany, Brazil, Argentina, England Result: Italy and France utterly pathetic and fail to qualify out of their respective groups. again Brazil and Argentina fail to pass the quarter-finals. Both netherlands beat the surprise team of the tourney, uruguay, in the semi-final. once again spain defeat germany, this team in the semi final. Spain wins first world cup in history by defeating netherlands in the final. For the most part the clear favorites never really win it all. only in 2010 did the clear favorite, spain, win it all w/o surprise. of course every tournament has surprise teams.
I wasn't able to watch the Bulgaria game as they pulled it from my ESPN3 at least. I like this lineup. Would you have Sneijder or Afellay in the middle though? I'd put Afellay there and Sneijder/Robben on opposite wings which would make the defensive spread very far giving van Persie more space in the middle. I'm a little surprised Wijnaldum didn't get the nod over Schaars or Strootman, I think he has lots of potential and even just being there would have helped his development.
06: I don't see France being a favourite, they had 5 wins and 5 draws in the qualification, in a very weak group. 08: I don't know how you see Germany as the "clear favourites" when Spain was right there with them.
To add, you can't have one "clear favourite" as italiano tried to do, there's never one team that's clearly above all other groups. If you look at history the teams that were considered amongst favourites won in the majority of cases.
If Spain wins, would that break some kind of record? Would they be the first country to win a Euro-World Cup-Euro consecutively?
I will be pulling for England as I have become a big fan of the EPL over the past few years and all of England's players play in the EPL. I will not go as far as to call them the favorites, but I do like there chances as the teams who I would call the favorites (Spain, Germany and Holland) are not as strong as they were in 2010. What I think hurts the Brits in national competition is how spread out there top talent is in league play. While just about all the top Spanish players play at Real or Barcelona, and a majority of the top Germans play in Munich and Italians in the two Milan teams, the English players are spread out between most of the EPL with guys coming from some of the lower teams like Stoke or Everton or Bolton or other teams like these. As a result I think the guys on the English team are not as comfortable playing with one another as some of the other top European teams are. Also, in the EPL teams seem to be much more diverse with players from what seems to be all corners of the earth, but in other countries (Germany, Spain and Italy) it seems that the majority of their league teams are made up of their countrymen.
What makes you think that Germany, Spain, Holland are not as strong as in 2010? Don't judge by meaningless friendlies, the coaches use these to try out youngsters and new tactics. All these 3 played a brilliant qualification and added top talent to their respective rosters, while keeping all veterans.
