[volkman10]

Portugal truly deserved to win.Cristiano Ronaldo finally leads from the front.

Cheers!

[joe1980]

It was a wonderful match between Netherlands and Portugal. Ronaldo played like a charm. I think Portugal deserves this. Group B is one of the toughest group and to be on the top of this group to qualify for the quarter finals is really quite an acheivement.

[volkman10]

Germany wins in spectacular fashion. Seems geared up to meet Italy/England.

Cheers!

[thoma]

Originally Posted by volkman10

Germany wins in spectacular fashion. Seems geared up to meet Italy/England.

Cheers!

Add to that some sloppy goal keeping and defending. Going by their standards and the opponents current form, I thought the Germans should have scored another 3 more times, but somehow could not capitalize on those chances provided by Reus.

I guess it will be a walk in the park for Spain today and a tough nut to crack for tomorrow's Italy vs England.

[joe1980]

Today's quarterfinals between England and Italy was the longest in this tournament. With Italy winning, the semi finals between Germany and Italy is going to be interesting. Will Italy repeat the 2006 world cup semi final drama? or will Germany revenge? In any case, it is going to be interesting to watch.

[thoma]

If England had won on penalties, the Germans would have had an easy job. Why is England never performing in big tournaments recently? The Italians were not as attacking as in the previous matches. They felt low on energy and the slowness in attack provided enough time for the English defenders to crowd around the ball, making all the Italian attacks fizzle out. I think they wanted this game to go into penalty shoot out from the beginning, or it was that they were low on confidence and thought the English was better. Would you believe that a team who got 20 attempts on target out of 35 attempts in total still not scoring a goal? On the other side, a good number of English passes went to the boots of the Italians! I wont term this as a good match for these reasons and as the attacks were never aggressive. But one good think is that the lack of aggression led both the teams to be not much interested in fouling or acting a foul.

Now we can look forward for an interesting match in Germany vs Italy, if Italy decides to play attacking game. Or else it will be German attack all along and Italy defending all of the attacks. The match will be noted more for the tactics employed by the teams against the opponents. Whatsoever the result, one of my favorites will surely make it into the finals.

[volkman10]

I guess the match results seem to go inline with the Poll results ( the first two slots)


Cheers!

[amitwlele]

Heartbreak for many BHPians i guess (not me ) with Germany not being in the finals. It was really surprising to see the strong German attack not able to score even once during the normal play time. The one consolation came as a Penalty in the injury time.

For me the shock was when my second choice of team winning this edition, Holland got knocked out in the first round itself. But good that my first choice, Spain reached the finals as expected.

Germany V/s Spain would have been a dream match up for the finals. But alas its not to be.

[thoma]

Germans were over-confident in thinking that the game will mostly be played around the opposition box. They forgot to fathom Balotelli's strength. It was from their own mistake, the Germans dug their grave. Mostly, it is impossible to come back into the game when a side especially like Italy is ahead by 2 goals. Only Germany or say Brazil has got that ability to try and even out things, but not yesterday. Though Gigi Buffon seemed a bit off-color in the beginning, luck decided to be with him yesterday. And later he put forward some stupendous saves. Another noteworthy thing is that I think no other team has changed from the past like Italy. They are not focused on defending alone, passing became swifter, less negative passes, don't foul much or act foul. Though they got some shortcomings in becoming the best European team, I'm becoming a fan of Cesare Prandelli and his boys.

Now, things won't be easy for Italy against the Spaniards. Spain is a side who does not get carried away by their own strength, as happened to Germany.

[StarrySky]

Based on the semi-final performances, Italy looks more impressive than Spain. Or maybe Spain took it a little bit easy against Portugal. But surely, Italy does not seem to have an issue with strikers and it is in the striking department that Spain has a problem.

[volkman10]

Spain proved that they are the reigning champs, was a pleasure to watch the Spanish play!

Cheers!

[thoma]

Too un-impressive game by a finalist, Italy. All credit to Spain for playing the game of world champions. The Spanish seemed wearing magnetic boots and playing with an iron ball. Such was their passes and none of them wanted to shoot for goal, they played as a team. That is how the ball is netted for sure, by passing negative to a teammate at the other side of the post unmarked by the goalie. Spain looked unbeatable from the start and they got all the deserving goals. Italy on the other side were totally exhausted and proved that they were not worthy to be a finalist and only because of Germany's lax, they got this far.

[amitwlele]

Happy that Spain won, but would have loved to watch a better match. It looked as if Italy surprised themselves to be in the finals and looked listless and out of form. Second half was a walk in the park for Spain.

Only 2 yellow cards in the entire match one each for Spain and Italy. It somehow gives an indicator of how closely fought the match was.

[naveenroy]

Wow, what an awesome match it turned out to be. Though I wanted Germany to win the tournament, I felt they were beaten comprehensively by Italy. But the finals was a real demolition. Nice play by Spain and the 2nd goal was especially impressive.

[mallumowgli]

It was a well fought match was good for the 60 minutes, till Thiago had to leave. Italians were so crestfallen that I thought I should go to sleep instead of watching the farce that played out for rest of the match!!

But this was a strange Euro - favourites Germany defeated by a surprisingly attacking Italy. Champions Spain doing everything, except getting inside the opponents box (exception was the finals). Holland also forgot to attack in almost all matches, with van Persie standing disinterested much deeper than the midfielders!! Portugal, once called, Brazilians of Europe, forced to play the European style due to the dependence on Ronaldo.

And surprise of surprises, Greece put in two goals in a single match!!!!Luckily they lost that match