Spain the favorite going in. Germany is stacked. Everybody loves the Oranje!

I'm liking Germany to take it, but if I had to pick a dark horse, how about Russia (I like the line on Russia) or Croatia.

Mesut Ozil or Miroslav Klose (he seems to always play his best at the international level) as the player of the tournament (if Germany wins).

It is anticipated that much of the hooligan action will be focused on the Dutch. They deserve it for surreptitiously stealing so many chunks of the Atlantic Ocean from the U.S. and Canada!

England all the way!

England along with Portugal are the countries I like cheering against the most (players that are on the team more than the country). Will Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo perform another disappearing act playing for their respective countries?

England might make it out of their group (but I don't see them doing much damage after that) and Portugal has it really tough with the Dutch and Germans.

I'm looking forward to Germany vs. Portugal tomorrow.

I'll be watching one of the Dutch matches tomorrow in DC before I go to Savor. One of my friends is Dutch.

Just so there's no confusion, I like the SOCCER team. The British Monarchy can like the dog sh#t off my wheels!



I'm with you on Portugal.

Rooney has matured a lot in the past while, and I think it will be exemplary in his performance this Euro.

No team is void of poor performances by their top players, especially in massive competitions like Euro or the World Cup etc. It's fair to call out players, but I think it's also futile because it's the past. The transient nature of human performance in a team sport not only relies the individual, but also the players around them.

Criticize a player for their performance a year ago or more, and they'll quite possibly make you look like a fool the next.

Well Cristiano Ronaldo is the best soccer player in the world right now IMO going into the Euro Cup (so he has that going for him right now). But he has also displayed vanishing acts playing for Portugal in the last few world cups and those were with much better squads on paper. I think there is a lot of pressure on him in this tournament because of how poor he has played in the past internationally.

Who? Oh, right... the Portuguese "whiz kid" with the bad hair.

No way out of the group of death for POR... not against Die Mannschaft, the Oranje and the DBU.

Bren R.

With the Oranje losing to Denmark, it opens the door for Portugal.

That's one way to look at it. My view is that Denmark has shown to be a tougher squad than they're given credit for. The KNVB lion isn't weak, there's just three strong predators in the group.

Bren R.

Well, the door is slammed wide open now for Portugal to advance along with Germany in the group of death.

I'm interested in the Italy vs Croatia game tomorrow. Italy played better than I expected and Croatia...come on dark horse.

Ireland vs Spain...meh

Croatia 6-nil.

A guy can hope.

Bren R.

A 1-0 or 2-1 win would do it for me.

Is there a large presence of Italians up west in Winnipeg that drive around in their cars with their hand on the horn, flags flying, screaming and yelling after important soccer matches?

No, we keep them sequestered to "Little Italy"...

Bren R.

That sounds an awful lot like Brazilians in Boston. They go absolutely bananas over that stuff.

Can we refer to them as "people of Brazilian heritage"?

The idea of people in Boston's Brazilians scares me. A lot.

Bren R.