The Euro 2004 Tournament starts this weekend. Saturday is the first game and sadly, we (in the United States) have to pay $20 per game to watch this. Given that I have no one I know within 100 miles who is a fellow soccer buff, I'm going to have to fork over some big bucks if I am to watch many games in this tournament.
I just get blank stares when I go into the local "sports bar" and ask them if they will be televising any of the Tournament.
There are a lot of interesting match-ups this year. I should say by way of preface that the Euro Tournaments are held ever four years and that this tournament overlaps the World Cup timing so that, in effect, we get a major tournament every two years in football. (I don't count the South American tournaments because (1) I never get to watch them, and (2) only Argentina or Brazil ever seems to win them. That may be my ignorance, who knows?)
In any event, the Euro tournaments are limited to the best national teams playing in Europe and the finals are reached by doing well in the qualifying matches (held over a course of some eighteen months I believe).
The backstory on the likely best game of the first round (England v. France) is that France is ranked either 1st or 2nd in the world currently and until the last World Cup were considered to be at least a head better than every other team in the world--given their winning of Euro 2000 and the 1998 World Cup. But a strenuous domestic season and internal friction in the team (plus questionable coaching) led to the poorest performance by a World Champion ever in WC history. And an exit from the 1st round group stage with merely a single point.
Contrast that with the performance of the British team, which managed to get out of the "Group of Death" (the colloquially-named group that is selected by the pundits as the toughest group to survive because of the quality of the teams in it) to make it to the quarter finals where they faced Brazil. The team was young (led by the new coach Sven Goran Eriksson) and missing Steve Gerard (a highly talented midfielder). David Beckham played with a not-healed broken foot and they still led 1-0 approaching half time. Then Beckham jumped out of the way of a tackle (certainly his foot an issue) and Ronaldinho sent a ball into the box that sailed over the head of aging keeper David Seaman to tie the game. The game ended as a 2-1 victory for Brazil and they went on to win the tournament.
But it was close.
But for that huge bit of luck from Ronaldinho, England might have defeated Brazil and then the rest of the tournament would have laid prostrate at their feet (they had just defeated the other finalist, Germany, 5-1 in Germany months before).
Since that tournament France has rebounded, playing much better coming into Euro 2004 (held in Portugal) and England finally has all its players healthy. Add to that that new talent has emerged on the British side in Frank Lampard and Wayne Rooney and that many of the players in this match play alongside one another in the Premier League and you have a match made by the Gods.
It's this Sunday, 11:45 am, and I can only hope that both sides play well and make it a memorable match. I know that I'll have at least $20 on England to win!
Posted by artandscience at June 11, 2004 10:48 AM