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Saturday, June 09, 2012

Euro 2012 Opening Day




The UEFA Euro 2012 will start at midnight (MY time), and the first match will pitch Poland, as co-host against Greece at 6pm Polish time. They are in Group A together with Russia and Czech Republic. I think the selection of date and time was cleverly done, so that people around most part of the world, especially on the Eastern side of the globe will be able to watch it on Friday. For Malaysian, it is an opportunity for some to sleep late without fearing of the work blues the next day (those in the city where working on Saturday is unheard of), and for some to sleep early so that they can wake up at midnight to watch, then continue sleeping after the match.

Poland is the lowest ranked team of all the competing teams at no 65 in FIFA ranking, while Greece is at no 14, Russia at no 11 and Czech at no 26. But these teams are still many many tiers above our Harimau team, which is lying at no 154. Anyway, as usual we will be happy because our neighbour, Singapore is 4 steps below us.

I have nothing much to say to comment on those team. Usually these kind of group will be seen as a boring group because there is no traditionally famous teams such as England, Germany, France or Spain. Anyway, you will never know that they may spring a surprise by winning difficult matches or score in huge margin. This happened in 2004 when Greece beat the fancied Portugal in Portugal to lift the Cup.

Checking on the net (about.com, thomsonsport.com, football365.com) for players to watch in Euro 2012, I only saw 2 players from Group A, namely Alan Dzagoev (Russia) and Robert Lewandowski (Poland). They are selected by all of these predictors, and we should take note of this info and track their performance.

The first match will be played at National Stadium Warsaw at the Polish capital city, Warsaw. This old town of Warsaw is listed in the Unesco World Heritage site. The other match will be played in Wroclaw, a northern city in Poland.

Poland is leading 1-0 now, from a goal scored by Robert Lewandowski at the 13th minute.


 


 


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