Euro 2008 Prediction Competition

[EPW]

Its sounds like a much more interesting game than the 2-team version

[Victor Galis]

Originally posted by Badfuzzy
Why does France keep losing?

Because they're terrible. Had we known this ahead of time, maybe Romania would have played aggressively against them

[LordShiva]

GOAL NL!

Now Romania should pull one back so I get teh score prediction right

@ Solver for making me change it

[Maquiladora]

Originally posted by LordShiva
GOAL NL!

5 minutes from a perfect score

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Victor Galis
Because they're terrible. Had we known this ahead of time, maybe Romania would have played aggressively against them

Romania couldn't play aggressively if their life depended on it, which is exactly why they were outclassed by the Orange tonight. They're hard to beat if they can lean back, defend and rely on the counter, but for once they couldn't afford to do so and what little attempts they made to change their style today didn't accomplish much (although I think if they had tried harder it would only have resulted in more goals for us).

[Victor Galis]

Normally I cheer against whatever team eliminates Romania, but I like the Netherlands so I'll blame Italy for not going 0-0 with France instead.

[LordShiva]

"Remember when Adrian Mutu put Romania 1-0 up against Italy on Friday? A scoreline which would have sent the world champions out of Euro 2008? Remember when Gianluigi Buffon pulled off the most mind-boggling penalty save to stop Mutu scoring a late penalty to make it 2-1 to the Romanians?"

[Hueij]

Sorry Victor, looking at all games in this group Romania deserved to go through instead of Italy. But life ain't fair

[Victor Galis]

Originally posted by Locutus
Romania couldn't play aggressively if their life depended on it, which is exactly why they were outclassed by the Orange tonight. They're hard to beat if they can lean back and defend, but for once they couldn't afford to and what little attempts they made to change their style had little effect (although I think if they had tried harder it would only have resulted in more goals for us).

Well, your defense didn't suck like the Italian one. I noticed in that game we were more defensive and had a couple quick counter attacks that were only stopped because Buffon is awesome. In this game, whenever a couple Romanian players attacked, they were still facing like 3-4 defenders.

Nonetheless, you guys managed with a partially second-string team what Italy and France couldn't with their real teams (no shocker there given the scores in those games). So what happened in the last 8 months since you guys lost to us in qualifiers? This certainly doesn't look like the same team (I remember watching you guys struggle to beat Albania too).

[Solver]

I initially wanted to predict 2-0 for both games but figured the same result twice would be too much. Therefore,

Spain - Greece 2 - 0
Russia - Sweden 1-3

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Victor Galis


Well, your defense didn't suck like the Italian one. I noticed in that game we were more defensive and had a couple quick counter attacks that were only stopped because Buffon is awesome. In this game, whenever a couple Romanian players attacked, they were still facing like 3-4 defenders.

Nonetheless, you guys managed with a partially second-string team what Italy and France couldn't with their real teams (no shocker there given the scores in those games). So what happened in the last 8 months since you guys lost to us in qualifiers? This certainly doesn't look like the same team (I remember watching you guys struggle to beat Albania too).

Also, NL's goals weren't erroneously called offside

:nyah:

[Hueij]

Originally posted by LordShiva
"Remember when Adrian Mutu put Romania 1-0 up against Italy on Friday? A scoreline which would have sent the world champions out of Euro 2008? Remember when Gianluigi Buffon pulled off the most mind-boggling penalty save to stop Mutu scoring a late penalty to make it 2-1 to the Romanians?"

Have you no heart Shiva?

[LordShiva]

Spain-Greece 2-1
Russia-Sweden 0-1

[snoopy369]

Assuming we now know the group champs/seconds, can someone post the full set of matches for us folk who don't really know what's what?

[Locutus]

Victor,
As I said earlier in the thread, this wasn't really a second-string team, it had 8 players that are regular starters (in fact, this line-up probably more closely resembled the line-ups we used in our qualifying encounters with you guys than the ones we used against France and Italy did), and the substitutions are pretty much the kind you could expect during a 'normal' game as well. It's just that Romania had to attack but mostly didn't.

But as Hueij said, based on performace over the 3 games, Romania deserved to go through far more than France or Italy

As to what happened to us, no one knows. Up until the game against Italy there was universal consensus among everyone who even remotely followed this team that we sucked balls and were never gonna survive the group stage barring a miracle, and then a miracle happened...

Probably a combination of things, including Van Nistelrooij returning after a row with Van Basten, Boulahrouz returning after a serious injury and single-handedly boosting our defense by about 300% (after Van Basten finally gave him his vote of confidence, which he was very hesitant to do until the game against Italy), Robben and Van Persie being (mostly) fit for a change, Van Basten finally changing his tune and adjusting his system to the players rather than vice versa, etc. But performance on this level is 80% mentality and only 20% physical performance, so it's probably mostly a combo of the low expectations taking away pressure, a winning mood after the first game and the fact that we always perform better on final tournaments than in qualifiers (but we usually start to falter around the time we get to the semis )

Anyway, today's results:

 1 Solver		49 (+10)
 2 Ecthy		47 (+4)
 3 LordShiva		45 (+8)
 4 Cort Haus		44 (+9)
 5 Locutus		42 (+4)
 6 OneFootInTheGrave	38 (+5)
 6 Victor Galis		38 (+4)
 6 germanos		38 (+6)
 9 Serb			37 (+9)
10 Monk			36 (+12)
11 Maquiladora		33 (+6)
11 Dauphin		33 (+6)
13 Wernazuma III	30 (+2)
14 McMeadows		26 (+4)
15 snoopy369		22 (+6)
16 Krill		20
17 Badfuzzy		14 (+2)
18 Hueij		 0