Despite finishing third in their group, looking far from convincing on their way through the knock-out stages and losing their star player to injury in the final, Portugal find themselves Euro 2016 winners. Quite how they managed to do it, or indeed France conspired to lose it is a mystery? Portugal’s safety-first, risk-little style won’t […]
Sunday’s Euro 2016 Final sees France take on Portugal at the Stade de France. While the hosts have seemed to gather momentum with each game that they have played, especially in their knockout games; Portugal have won little praise thanks to their pragmatic and quite frankly rather boring approach. Both teams have significant firepower up […]
Wales’ progression to the semi-final of Euro 2016 has had a slightly surreal feeling to it; as other, more highly rated teams were sent home, Chris Coleman’s men just kept doing what they do and found themselves facing Portugal, who had looked pretty underwhelming through the tournament thus far. However just as us football romantics […]
Due to my own five-a-side football commitments I only got home in time to watch the last five minutes and then extra time and penalties of the Poland –Portugal match. After an early goal which saw Lewandowski finally get his name on the scoresheet, by all accounts the match was a bit lacking in goalmouth […]
Other than Portugal sneaking a win late in extra time against Croatia, who couldn’t replicate their performance in defeating Spain in the Group, and the two surprising results on Monday, the Round of 16 went largely to form. We now have the four quarter final match-ups over the next four days; here are some thoughts […]
With the start of the knockout phases and three matches per day, the intensity of the tournament went up a notch or two over the weekend, but my wife and I decided that the only way to spend the weekend was by watching all six games. First up was Poland and Switzerland, the game started […]
After the excitement of Croatia’s stunning victory over Spain the previous evening, I didn’t really have high expectations for the final day of group games; I felt that Portugal would have to perform better after their first two disappointing games and that while Ireland would no doubt give it their best, having to beat Italy […]
Friday was our last full day in Nice, so we made sure we watched all of the games. After a trip to Monaco where we spent the grand total of an hour; if you aren’t into yachts, motor racing or spending 29 Euros on a cheeseburger, there isn’t really a lot more to see and […]
The first round of games concluded with an interesting game in which an unknown Hungary overcame 10-man Austria; their second goal, a delightful chip from Zoltan Steiber was particularly enjoyable. The evening game saw underdogs Iceland frustrate Cristiano Ronaldo and Portugal by holding them to a draw; the Real Madrid star complained afterwards that Iceland […]
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