Spain could thump France.
Last two days, I’ve become convinced that Spain will win by two or three goals. It’s a bit weird, since weeks ago I had a bet on France to get to the final.
Why do I now think this way? It\’s a question I\’ve been asking myself off and on since I got up at 8.30 and it\’s taken me this long to figure out the answer :
Now that I\’ve seen the French team three times, I don\’t rate them.
I bought into the idea of Laurent Blanc\’s leadership, and a Nasri-Benzema attack, an athletic new midfield, and I imagined Les Bleus would do really well in this tournament to compensate for the disgrace of 2010.
Now I\’ve changed my mind on France. I don\’t see a leader, I don\’t see a goalscorer, I don\’t see a defence, and I\’m wondering if Blanc will get another job. So, really, I\’ve become just like a dimwit Tory toff and done a U-turn and now believe that Spain will destroy big Rami and romp it.
OK, any football match can go either way, through luck or injury or a bad decision, but my job here, if I write an occasional preview, is to tell my readers what I think and why.
I don\’t know the line-ups yet and finding out the selections are, for me, the first part of the fun, especially when we know most of the players as well as we do in this game.
Last night the German coach surprised everyone with his team selection.
He rested Gomez, Podolski and Muller.
The absence of those three made me wonder whether that Bild story was true.
Apparently, they were training last week and Low was furious with what he was seeing, so he blew his whistle, called everybody together and screamed at them : “Eighty per cent is not enough!â€
Do we believe a downmarket rag?
We don\’t know if that story\’s true. But Low is intense, and not just during games, so I wouldn\’t be surprised.
I love a demanding coach, so I think it’s entirely legitimate to shout, “Eighty per cent is not enough!â€
What I saw was this : Germany came out of the blocks at 100 mph and thrashed Greece 4-2, although it was only 1-0 at half-time.
The drama came in 55, when Greece\’s best player, Salpingidis, broke away on the right and crossed low into the box for Celtic striker Samaras to stab home, after he had pulled Boateng\’s shirt.
The score was 1-1 for six minutes but it wasn\’t close.
Referees can\’t see everything, and that worries me for the Italy game.
If Rooney\’s got his touch back, we\’re not underdogs.
OK, we are not good at beating Italy but every game is different and this one is very different because both teams are going in opposite directions at the same time.
Just as Roy Hodgson is making England more solid, Cesare Prandelli is making Italy more adventurous.
It\’s significant, though, that Prandelli\’s favourite player is Montolivo, who doesn\’t get a game.
There’s a limit to how adventurous any Italian coach can be when the pressure is on. Clean sheets are in their DNA and if the Azurri have an edge it\’s in both boxes.
They have a lot of know-how, decades of expertise in the arts of goal-nicking and the black arts of goal-stopping. Italians know how to pinch half a yard, and how to bump, wrestle, shirt-pull and obstruct to stop you pinching a yard.
We could win the game by out-running them and out-competing them.
Or we could lose the game on a sneaky foul. The latter’s been my gut feeling for the last two days. Am I paranoid?
To pass the time before Sunday\’s 7.45 kick off in Kiev, I\’ll write more about England-Italy tomorrow.