Austria got their first point ever in a Euro tournament as they managed to draw with Polska yesterday on a with the help of a very suspect penalty call by English referee Howard Webb. Polish fans are pretty crazy about their soccer, especially with the national hero status of coach Leo Beenhakker (he received the order of Polonia Restituta, which as a Dutchman is pretty impressive as only two other foreigners have been given the award, one being Douglas MacArthur), despite the fact that his teams seem to always come up short in every group stage or just don't show up at all (he managed to not qualify for the 1986 World Cup while managing his native Dutch side). But his hero status has made many step up to support his side, including the Polish Prime Minister. Luckily he is back to being calm, but with the open European borders, I could see him driving over to Austria to go postal on some soccer officials.
In other Euro news, the Group of Death, Group C, begins the second leg of games today. France-Netherlands will cause me to leave work early, but I will be keeping my eye on Italy-Romania. Questions to be answered by these games include:
-Will France and Italy recover from terrible performances?
-Is the Netherlands back (to 1988 form of domination)?
-What is the deal with Romania?
We shall see what changes to the lineup Italy makes, probably towards a more counterattacking style as in the World Cup. They got caught in the Dutch counter a few too many times in that first match. And France? Thierry and Vieira would help get more offensive, but the Netherlands is on fire. There isn't a Zidane to turn it on right now, so Ribery and others will have to step it up. And how much better is Coupet than Barthez? Waaaaaaaaay better.
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