Euro 2012 (Group A)

The 2012 UEFA European Football Championship, commonly referred to as Euro 2012, will be the 14th running of the tournament. The tournament will be hosted by Poland and Ukraine between 8 June and 1 July 2012. It is the first time that either nation has hosted the tournament. This is part one of my predictions for the event.



GROUP A 


Czech Rep

The 1976 Winners of the tournament when they were Czechoslovakia the Czech Republic qualified for this tournament in Group I behind Spain. Worringly they did lose a home game to Lithuania back in September 2010 but did redeem themselves somewhat with the return tie. In that game on 11th October Czech Republic did win by a score of 4-1. In fact recent results have been not to bad, the tied in an away game to the Republic of Ireland, beat out Montenegro over two legs in the playoffs for this tournament and also beat co hosts, Ukraine 4-0 in September of last year.

Greece:

Bankrupt they may be but they can still send a team to the European Tournament. Greece actually qualified for the tournament above Croatia, Israel, Latvia, Georgia and Malta in order to secure their place. The 2004 winners certainly will be a tough opposition for the other three and in fact were undefeated in their qualification group. The first two games, home to Georgia and away to Croatia both of which resulted in draws. Other than those and a slip up away to Latvia in September of last year every other qualifying match was a win for the Greeks.

Poland:

The Co hosts are very difficult to predict. When they are good they can be quite impressive but when they are bad then they are terrible. An example for you, 25th March 2011 they lost a friendly match to Lithuania before going on a middle of the year run which included wins against Argentina, Georgia and Belarus with draws against other big guns, Mexico, Germany, Korea and Italy. The question is whether home advantage will be an advantage or disadvantage for the Poles. With the teams in their group I think we may see the co hosts go out atthe group stage. In fact, the last time they actually got out of the Group stage was in the 1960 tournament and for most tournaments they didn't even qualify.

Russia:

This team used to be good. Back in the 1960's through to the mid 1970's they were either in the Final, winning it or not far off. Then they went off the boil for a while until the last outing in 2008 and the tournament in Spain. There they reached the Semi Finals before being beaten by eventual winners and hosts Spain. Unfortunately I do not see the return of the good times, at least not in this tournament.