World

Europe

Netherlands

Group B Euro 2008…

April 21st, 2008 | By: Jan | 18 Comments »

England fans still wake up screaming with this image: Jan Tomaszewski

Let’s take a look at the nations that together form Group B.

This group consists of Austria, Croatia, Germany and Poland. I know we have some history buffs on the blog here who could make some interesting comments on the relationships between these countries in the past. But I won’t go there, especially not with my German roots :-).

Austria, being the host country, would normally be a favorite. But not this time. With all due respect for the Austrians, there’s no Ernst Happel, Franz Hasil, Hans Krankl, Bruno Pezzey or Toni Polster in this team. The question is, would they have qualified if they had to play for it? But…never the less, they’re there. And they will be supported by the home fans, so who knows, a finals Austria - Oranje? Nah…. It’s not going to happen. Still, it’s not an easy group for - say- Germany. Austria will see a win over the Teutons as winning the whole bloody tournament.
Manager Hickersberger came on board in 2006 to stop the decline in Austrian football. This is basically the first time at an EC tournament and as I said, they didn’t need to qualify.

We did see a bit of their strength against Oranje some months back, when the Austrians came up 3-0 in front from set pieces. They did allow Oranje to score four times to make it 3-4 but the egg was on our faces and the Austrians showed the world they know how to kick a ball. I’m sure Henk Timmer received some free vouchers to come skiing though…

Big name players in their current group are Martin Harnik (Werder Bremen), Thomas Prager (Heerenveen), Andres Ivanschitz (Panathinaikos) and Rene Aufhauser (Salzburg).

Germany is a fave for the title, of course. Because they’re Germany. They have the quality, the spirit and the mentality. They may not have the individual class countries like, well, Holland has, but that didn’t stop them under Klinsmann two years back. But Jurgen has moved on, so we’ll have to see if their current manager, Joachim Low, can have the same impact.

What else can you say about them? Gary Lineker: “Football is a game between 22 players and a ball, it takes 90 minutes to play and at the end the Germans win.” We know they were very successful in World Cup and Euro Tournaments. And yes, they had great players in the past. Here goes: Uwe Seeler, Franz Beckenbauer, Jurgen Grabowski, Uli Hoeness, Gerd Muller, Overath, Netzer, Rummenigge, Litbarski, Fisher, Hrubesch, Moller, Effenberger, Voller, Matthaus, Brehme, Kahn, Sammer… I mean, it’s not even funny anymore.

In the 2006 WC, Germany went all the way to the “little finals” beating Portugal 3-1. Klose won the Golden Boot, Podolski was talent of the Tournament, etc etc, blablabla, suck suck suck…

Germany became the first team to qualify for this EC and deserves the favorite’s role. Players to look out for: Michael Ballack, Miro Klose, Podolski, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Metzelder, Phillip Lahm and Jens Lehman.

Croatia is maybe also the Brazil of Europe :-). They can play that technical positioning play and through the years gave us some fab football. Slavn Bilic is their current success coach and with tactical prowess and bravado he and his men outplayed England. To name one. In the past, whixch is short because until the 90s the Croatian players would play for yugoslavia, they reached quarter finals in the WC98 and the quarter finals in the EC 96.
I’m sure most of us remember the great goals of Suker and players like Boban and Prosinecki.

Today, Croatia has players like klasnic (Werder Bremen), Pranjic (Heerenveen), Leko (AS Monaco) and Simic (AC Milan). Croatia plays total football, has technically skilled players who like to attack and playing fancy is second nature to them.

Their win over England at Wembley in the qualifications for this EC is already a classic.

Poland is an outsider. The first time they compete at this level in Europe. But, having said that, they impressed during the qualifications and with seasoned Leo Beenhakker as their coach, who knows what might happen.

Poland’s best performance ever was in the WC1974 (not a bad tournament, that). With big guns like Lato, Deyna, Smolarek, Gorgon and legendary goalie Jan Tomaszewski, when they reached the third spot. Eight years later they repeated the performance in 1982’s Spain’s WC. With big guns like Zbigniew Boniek, Buncol, Zmuda and again Smolarek.

The Smolarek genes traveled further, with Wlodi’s son Ebi (like his dad a former Feyenoord player) an important striker in Beenhakker’s team. Other big names in the squad are Jerzy Dudek, Kuszcak (Man U), Krynowek (Woflsburg), Matusiak and Saganowski (Southampton).

Beenhakker can be trusted to prep his team to the max for the couple of matches they play this summer. In particular the game against Germany will be a finals for Don Leo and his troop.

In a normal world, Germany and Croatia will move on. But Poland could hurt the Germans while Austria with their home advantage and mysterious forces in sports could do some damage here and there too. No matter what, Croatia guarantees good football and most other matches will just be tense.

Bring it on!

Tags: Ballack, Beenhakker, Euro 2008, Group C, Oranje, Smolarek, The Netherlands

Netherlands World Cup RSS Feed

Comments

By simon | April 21st, 2008 at 5:25 am

Croatia and Germany will go through.. Austria got extremely bad timing, in the middle of a generation gap. A lot of players recently quit playing in the national team, while some of the youngsters (like Harnik) havent become regulars in their club teams yet. In the meantime, the Austrian league is in a bit of a crisis. The best player of 2007 was an 38 year old striker called Ivica Vastic (who the Austrian coach keeps out from his squad despite the obvious lack of quality forwards in Austria).

Their best player as I see it is Roland Linz in Sporting Braga, but his season has been far from perfect. Of course, there are some more quality names; Emanuel Pogatetz does a job as defender, Andreas Ivanschitz is an exciting name and late bloomer Rene Aufhauser would probably do a good work in a better league.

The main problem of Austria is their defense. Coach Hickersberger lost former captain Markus Schopp who recently quit, and keeps ignoring 38 year old Michael Baur’s steady performances. But, at least they got some decent goalkeepers in Alex Manninger and Jurgen Macho who has both performed well on the highest level.

By toni | April 21st, 2008 at 5:56 am

I agree with almost everything You have said. “!n a normal world, Germany and Croatia will move on”. Ofcourse. Who else!? But the world isn’t normal. And after all, this is football we are talking about.
Finally, allow me to correct your little mistake. In the World Cup 1998 Croatia reached the semifinals, and not the quarterfinals, like in Euro 1996. In the semifinals against France in Paris, the first half ended 0:0, but the second half started furiously. Davor Suker scored for Croatia’s final. 1:0! And for that couple of hundred seconds Croatia was really in the finals with Brasil. Unfortunately, France had Lilian Thuram. He scored for 1:1. 20 minutes later, Thuram’s scored another one! France Croatia 2:1. Maybe next time…

By sandesh pant | April 21st, 2008 at 7:03 am

hello guys
it had been so many days since i visited this site. i was out of kathmandu n other stuffs.
i visited the site today after long time n so many comments left to read. i went thro almost all the stories since the 1st of april n plenty of them were amazing
the name of dutch footballers, the dirk kuyt story, the best holland player ever the sneijder free kick n some others too
For an absolute Oranje soccer fan like me Its a great great site
most of the leagues in europe are all but decided i keep myself bg in the Arsenal and hamburg matches coz i like them very much. cong to psv fans they have won again hpe to see ajax back at their best next season with van basten n company bergkamp may be, wont he??
the disappointing thing over the past few weeks has been the slump of arsenal. it really hurts wen decisions go against u in some crucial games t=but they have a great squad n i believe a few addition to the squad may b absolutely fantastic in the next season. Its a heavenly pleasure to watch Arsenal play
IPL is the next big thing in sports nowadays. so i watch the T20 cricket matches as well
And at last plzzz van der vaart dont go to chelsea

Posted from Nepal

By goose | April 21st, 2008 at 7:15 am

@sandesh; welcome back my friend…

Germany are very strong this year…i reckon they will win it all (S^%^%$$#$##$%#$%!!!)

Posted from Netherlands

By goose | April 21st, 2008 at 12:35 pm

off topic; Koeman out!! hahaha … great news, hope well never see him again (sure thats wishful thinking on my part but who cares!!) bye, bye Ronald!!

Posted from Netherlands

By AJ | April 21st, 2008 at 12:56 pm

Germany and Croatia to move on from G.b

Germany v. Czech
Croatia v. Portugal

Holland and Italy to move on from G.c

Holland v. Sweden
Italy v. Spain

Posted from Canada

By dirk v.d berg | April 21st, 2008 at 2:24 pm

I say it will be something like:

Austria - Germany 0-3
Croatia - Poland 2-1
Austria - Poland 0-2
Croatia - Germany 2-3
Austria - Croatia 0-3
Germany - Poland 3-1

So Germany 1st, Croatia 2nd, Poland 3rd, Austria last.

Posted from Canada

By tomasz | April 21st, 2008 at 3:09 pm

Don’t want to be a pain in the ass but Wlodi Smolarek didn’t play in 1974 World Cup and Dudek won’t play this year. Other than that, I’d like Poland to surprise everybody here, but I agree that talent wise we can’t be considered favourites.

Posted from Poland

By Bob | April 21st, 2008 at 10:01 pm

Will the Netherlands play any other friendlies before the beginning of Euro 2008? If so, when and against whom? I missed the Netherlands-Austria match, so it would be interesting to watch the Dutch play now, just before the tournament.

Posted from United States

By goose | April 22nd, 2008 at 1:29 am

@Bob; this is the programm;

Players get together on: May 20

First friendly: May 24 v Ukraine

Second friendly: May 29 v Danmark

Third friendly: June 1 v Wales

First game on the EC: June 9 v Italy

Second game on the EC: June 13 v France

Third game on the EC: June 17 v Romania

gts

Posted from Netherlands

By Kervin | April 22nd, 2008 at 4:14 am

Koeman has been sacked…

By goose | April 22nd, 2008 at 4:33 am

@Kervin; already broke the news here yesterday!..but great, great news!! i really hate Koeman (as a manager)…isnt it great to start a new job, loose 16 games, get fyerd after 6 months and walk away with 9 (!!) mln euro’s!!!

Posted from Netherlands

By Jan | April 22nd, 2008 at 6:28 am

Great posts all…

@Simon: where do you get that insight on Austrian football? Do you follow everything??

@Toni: Thanks for the correction! And with the “normal world” remark, I tried to convey exactly your thoughts…

@Sandesh: good to have you back

@Tomasz: I assume you are a Poland fan? Care to feed more info on this site about your team? It’s always good to have more insights. I thought Smollie was part of the 74 group? Although he didn’t play?

@Goose: thanks for that program on Oranje! Did Koeman get 9 Mio euros?????????? My GOD!!! I would have sunk the Valencia ship for half! They should’ve just emailed me!! Any Spanish clubs out there looking for a coach? Take me! Sign me!

Posted from Australia

By sandesh | April 22nd, 2008 at 7:59 am

with news season beginning in 3 or 4 months where do u ppl expect koeman to join?? any epl club any german club any national team??
i think the record of koeman in valencia is way too bad but he is lucky to walk away with that sum of money

Posted from Nepal

By goose | April 22nd, 2008 at 8:32 am

@sandesh; with a little good luck we wont see Koeman back as a manager for quit some time….. Koeman sucks!!!

@Jan; thats right my friend, 9 mln euro’s for fucking things up!! anyone have a job like that for me?? please contact me via this blog…. probl. one of the worst manager-transfers in the history of football (and i knew that it was, i never believed in Koeman as a manager…its all just a pose, the guy hasnt got a clue!!)

Posted from Netherlands

By tomasz | April 22nd, 2008 at 9:50 am

@Jan
I’m running the Poland blog here so all the info you need is there. In short, I’d list Smolarek, Boruc (Celtic), Blaszczykowski (Dortmund) and Krzynowek (Wolfsburg) as our biggest ’stars’. Zurawski (former Celtic, today Greek Larissa) also used to be good. Wlodi Smolarek took part in 1982 and 1986 World Cups (scored our only goal in the latter one). He’s considered as one of the best Polish players of the eighties.

Posted from Poland

By Jan | April 22nd, 2008 at 1:38 pm

Thanks Tomasz, and I stand corrected re: Wlodi… A huge mistake, it appeared to be… Bloody research staff here is useless!!!

He was extremely popular in Holland. Already was before he came to play. Fans in Rotterdam and Utrecht adored him. What type of football does Poland play under Don Leo?

Posted from Australia

By tomasz | April 22nd, 2008 at 4:45 pm

Yeah, it’s hard to get a good research staff about Poland, tell me about it. As for Wlodi Smolarek, he’s also very popular in Poland, especially in Lodz as he played for the local Widzew. Only recently Widzew Lodz fans wanted him as the new manager of the team but the board chose somebody else. One thing I’ll always associate with Smolarek is his time-saving play when he kept the ball for two ot three minutes in the corner in the game against USSR. Now everytime when a player wants to save time our commentators say ‘just like Smolarek against USSR’. Don Leo wants us to play positional attacking football and keep the ball as long as possible. Unfortunately, the only time that Polish team was able to keep the ball was in 1974; counter attack is in our blood. But, we are learning. The best thing about Leo is that he taught us how to play with the top teams. Hopefully we’ll prove talented students during the Euros.

Posted from Poland

Comments are closed