Euro 2008 and teams
For some bizarre reason, I have been really enjoying the European Championship despite England having failed to qualify for it. In fact, it may be because we’re not in it that I’m enjoying it so much. There’s none of the tension, fretting, worrying, frustration, etc, etc, that typically coincides with following England in a major football championship.
Having said that, I have been disappointed with the more recent quarter-final games. As the tension increases with the move to knock-out stages, it seems that the players shift into a far more defensive mindset. After all the adventure of the group stages, there just hasn’t been as much entertaining football. Let’s hope that things improve with the semi-finals later in the week.
Watching football - or any team sport really - always gets me thinking about, well, teams. Its fascinating seeing how some teams are crippled due to too much reliance on a ’star’ player whilst other ‘lesser’ teams really pull together and pull off outstanding results. Whilst I wanted Holland to win, I was very impressed with how the Russians played so well as a team and ended up totally dominating the match.