UEFA EURO 2004™

[cheetum]

does anyone care? well I had only a passing interest at first but due to some interesting developements I have been starting to follow this event a bit more closely.

I know that 90% of American and Canadian hattrickers could give a rats ass about real soccer, but in Europe, excitement over this event is like any North American major sports playoff event, times ten.

anyway i bring this up because this time around has been especially great for football (soccer) fans due the huge upsets that are happening. Germany didnt even make it out of group play. Portugal, the cup hosts, ousted England in what must have been a fantastic match right down to the penalty shootout. But the most suprising upset was Greece, heavy underdogs in the quarter-final round, beating cup favorites France 1-0. It wouldnt be too suprising if one of these teams didnt make it to the semi-finals, but all three seems quite improbable.

as I post this, sweden and denmark are still 0-0 at half-time. winner will face portugal in the semi's.

[Katon]

Go look in the general discussion section - we've got an eight page thread about it

[TargetPractice6]

I tried to listen to the stupid BBC broadcast but it had to freaking buffer every 3 seconds. It pisses me off that the I actually want to listen to a soccer game for once and I can't even get a good stream.

[FrogMan]

as I post this, sweden and denmark are still 0-0 at half-time. winner will face portugal in the semi's.
It actually was Sweden and Holland and they went all the way to penalty kicks. I watched the last 30 minutes of regulation, plus extra time and the kicks, was pretty good...

And as Katon said, there's a huge thread about it in the general discussion forum...
http://dynamic2.gamespy.com/~fof/forums/showthread.php?t=26627

FM

[figofamz]

Yea i have bin kinda following this. Im happy portugal won but the france match was a terrible upset. I wanted to see figo against zidane but i guess not. My predictions are portugal will win the whole thing and figo can retire happily if he still decides on doing that. I shud call him up and see what he says :) lol.

[OldGiants]

I've been watching/listening to a scrambled Comcast pay-per-view that comes in okay about 10% of the time, but at least I can hear it compared to the BBC world service on short wave which doesn't make it through the sun's interference during the day.

I have to say my interest peaked with England vs. Portugal, a great game (until the penalties came into play), and Greece/France a stunning upset. Today's scoreless 120 minute bore fest is why futbol is so hard to really get up for, IMO. And deciding a match with penalty kicks is awful (albeit understandable from a time perspective). Penalty kicks is a bit like deciding the Super Bowl with field goal kicking after a scoreless OT period.

I like the idea that in futbol a goal is a rare event and to be treasured, so why suddenly change to a goal fiesta format to decide the most important games? Perhaps i'm just grumpy, but I wish the replay rule was in effect for this tournament.