It’s two years before the FIFA World Cup heads to the Motherland, to South Africa. That must mean Europe is holding their championships and indeed they are. The Euro 2008 is set to begin 7 June and end 29 June. Hosts Switzerland and Austria will compete with 14 other national teams to be considered Europe’s best and earn a bid into the FIFA Confederations Cup which is 14-25 June, 2009 in South Africa.
Euro 2008 is being held in both Switzerland and Austria. Portugal, Czech Republic, Turkey, Croatia, Germany, Poland, France, Italy, Netherlands, Romania, Greece, Russia, Spain, and Sweden will join Switzerland and Austria to determine Europe’s best national team.
In 2004, Greece were crowned champions surprising many including myself beating Portugal in the championship match 1-0. After losing 1-2 to Russia and drawing 1-1 with Spain in the first two matches, Greece went on to win the rest including two wins over Portugal, a win over France and the Czech Republic. This year Greece is back in it in Group D with two familiar opponents from 04′ (Spain and Russia) and Sweden. Both my teams Portugal and Spain should advance. I think Portugal is in the toughest group in the tournament. All four teams in Group A were part of the World Cup in 2006 and two of the four (Portugal and Switzerland) advanced into the latter rounds [Switzerland defeated by Ukraine in the second round, and Portugal defeated by France in the semifinals and again by Germany (hosts) in the consolation match]. However, that was then. I don’t know if there’s a favorite to win it all or not, and if there is I certainly don’t know who it would be. There is a team that I expect to advance far in the tournament and that’s the Italians. They are the world champions and in my mind have an obligation to defend that status not only in 2010 in South Africa, but in every major tournament and important friendlies or exhibition matches. Yet, at the same time I understand how hard it can be to win two different tournaments with same but “different” national team. I’m not at all confident in my abilities to foresee a champion yet, but I’m fairly confident about who should emerge from the group stages to advance:
Group A — Portugal and Czech Republic
Manchester United winger, favorite player, and likely FIFA Player of the Year (42 season goals); Cristiano Ronaldo (Portugal).
Group B — Germany and Croatia
Michael Ballack part of Chelsea F.C. Champions’ League runners-up and captain of German national team.
Group C – France and Netherlands (I know, I’m going out on a limb here and contradicting myself not picking the world champs, especially after what I said I expect from them. I just have a weird feeling about this group.)
Ryan Babel (Netherlands), Liverpool player acquired from Ajax. Unfortunately suffered an ankle injury (torn ligaments) and will not be participating in the Euro 2008.
Group D – Spain and Greece
There they are, Euro 2004 Champions! I don’t think they’ll repeat. Then, they could surprise us again.
I cannot wait for this to begin. The first match is Switzerland vs. Czech Republic on Saturday, 7 June, 11:00 (CST). I’m glad ESPN and especially ESPN360 will be covering so many matches. I’m also glad to see ABC getting in and broadcasting a couple of matches as well (Quarterfinal match 21 June and the Final on 29 June). Hopefully ABC’s coverage of the Final will ignite some more interest among Americans in the sport. Let’s also hope that there will be more knowledgeable commentators who can do more than just call what we see and not be so critical of a star player if that player has an off match.
Thursday 29.05.08 at 11:47 |
One thing I can’t imagine myself doing is even trying to predict who will come out on top in these tournaments. Especially after 2004! I would think that Italy will be loaded with confidence and should do well, but then I haven’t looked at their roster–how many guys do they have returning from 2006?
My gut feeling is–like you, I think–Spain or Portugal. Steve was saying that the Spain roster was loaded, but I haven’t even looked at it. I did see that Raul won’t be playing–that says something, that they’ve got some good, young guys. I would think el Nino (Torres?–can’t remember his name, the blonde Liverpool striker), will be a force. For a minute I was thinking how exciting it would be to watch Messi and then I remembered he was Argentinian! Duh…
I just hope Spain doesn’t field a full side against us in that friendly on June 4—God help us.
Thursday 29.05.08 at 15:31 |
The Spanish defense is the only unknown to me about Spain at the moment. Casillas should be back there in net for them during the Euros though, but I don’t know about the friendly. Speaking of, next Wednesday against the U.S. one wouldn’t expect a full strength roster so close to the Euros, but I could be wrong. God help us indeed if Spain shows up with a full squad. Either way, with or without a full starting 11 from the Spanish, the U.S. will have to step up big time from yesterday’s showing.
You are right, Fernando Torres is the blonde striker from Liverpool.
Things may not pan out as expected in the group with Italy, the Netherlands, France, and Romania. It’s one of those “feelings” I had when I saw the United States’ group in 06, but didn’t say anything. I haven’t seen the Italian’s roster either so I don’t know just how good they’ll be. If they have that same defense from 06, they’re going to be really tough to beat. The only teams to score a goal against them in regulation in 06 were France and themselves against the U.S.
Saturday 31.05.08 at 16:27 |
We’re getting close to the start of what many consider the best tournament in the world. Even better than the World Cup, you might ask? Well, the reason, they’d say, is that there are no mediocre teams that qualify. No China or Costa Rica. Of course, it’s more meaningful to win the WC, but the competition itself may be better balanced and more exciting at the Euro tournament.
Looks like your choices to advance out of group play are very solid. The only disagreement I might have is with your assessment of Group C. For one thing, I think this may be in the running as one of the toughest groups in any competition ever. As for who will survive, it’s hard to know. It easily could be France and Holland. But then it’s not crazy to imagine that it could be Italy and Romania either.
I did a little looking at the 2 most prominent soccer ranking lists. One is FIFA. The other is one that many say is actually more accurate because it is quicker to adjust to more recent results. It’s called ELO and it’s the same methodology that they use to rate chess masters. Anyway, here are the Euro groups along with the FIFA and ELO rankings, respectively.
Group A: Czech Republic 6, 9; Portugal 9, 13; Turkey 25, 19; Switzerland 48, 25
Group B: Germany 5, 7; Croatia 13, 12; Poland 27, 28; Austria 101, 58
Group C: Italy 3, 2; France 7, 4; Netherlands 10, 6; Romania 12, 11
Group D: Spain 4, 5; Greece 8, 14; Sweden 23, 23; Russia 25, 26
Should be a great competition even without Brazil and Argentina there to make it a world championship.
Monday 2.06.08 at 1:49 |
Europe is so balanced, it’s no wonder why FIFA selects many teams from Europe to go into the World Cup and why Europe usually has the favorite (other than Brazil or Argentina) to win it.
I’m very familiar with the ELO rating methodology. Ever since the BCS’s “failures” I’ve been looking into some of the rating methods used trying to figure out why some are so bad (BCS).
Group C is tougher than I thought. I had no idea Romania was that high up in both rankings. Group C should be a interesting group to watch. If you go by the UEFA Coefficients which supposedly seed European teams in international competitions such as the Euros, the groups would look something like this:
Group A: Czech Rep. 2.333; Portugal 2.192; Turkey 1.958; Switzerland 1.800
Group mean: 2.071
Group B: Croatia 2.409; Germany 2.250; Poland 2.167; Austria 1.500
Group mean: 2.082
Group C: Netherlands 2.417; Italy 2.364; Romania 2.250; France 2.091
Group mean: 2.281
Group D: Sweden 2.273; Spain 2.182; Greece 2.167; Russia 1.958
Group mean: 2.145
Greece is considered the #1 seed because they are defending champions. I have some qualms with the coefficients though. Look at France. Domenech complained and got UEFA to review the way they are doing the actual calculations for future Euros because of where his team is placed overall (14th). I agree, France is not in the bottom 15th or 20th percentile, there’s no way. The Netherlands and Sweden may be a little overrated here too, but that’s all subjective.
Nevertheless… 5 days and counting…
Monday 2.06.08 at 9:46 |
Ranking criteria are inherently difficult to evaluate when you have multiple goals. Certainly, we’d want measures to be fair, predictive, intuitive, straight-forward, and robust in the face of statistical anomalies. The best predicting models may be ones where recent form is weighted more heavily, but those are often more complicated. If the purpose is to reward teams with high seeds based on past accomplishments, then a longer look-back period may be appropriate, even if it goes far enough back as to be less relevant as a predictor of future success.
My view is that the UEFA Coefficient is one of the more flawed metrics. For one thing, it goes back about 7 years to the qualifying tournaments used to decide WC and Euro Championship teams. It does not count results in the Cup competitions themselves, only the qualifiers. It doesn’t account for the strength of the groups, either. So if you’re in a group with San Marino, the Faroe Islands, and Liechtenstein you’re pretty well assured a better coefficient. (I’m sure groups are better balanced than that, but you get the idea. And you still get unreasonably bad draws like poor Scotland did for Euro 2008 qualifications. The two that made it out of that group happened to be the two finalists of the WC.)
Anyway, that’s all academic. Let’s enjoy the actual competition.
Tuesday 3.06.08 at 1:21 |
The coefficients were used as a comparison by me. It’s interesting to see how UEFA ranks the teams going into the Euros this weekend.
I terms of ranking/rating sports teams, it’s difficult to nearly impossible to come up with one that will accurately measure the different aspects such as (what you said) “being fair, predictive, intuitive, straight-forward, and can withstand a statistical quirk.” Of course when there are many aspects to be considered, there must be a general agreement on what they are. What kind of ranking system doesn’t include actual results in the cup competitions.
How do they do the draws for the Euro qualifying and Finals tournament? I’m wondering because Italy and France were together in the qualifying rounds and are together in Group C. To me, that doesn’t make sense. I would have suspected some sort of randomization between the qualifying and championship rounds. Maybe they do randomize and it was just a coincidence for France and Italy.
Please, no comments about the result of the Portugal match on Saturday. I’m scheduled to work from 3-7pm then and will likely miss the second half.
How about Cannavaro and his ankle injury? HUGE blow for the Italians! Ryan Babel (NED) had a similar problem and will miss the tournament as well.
4 days, 9 hours, 39 minutes…