Euro Fever

Szczesny at his finest.

Personally I'm a not huge fan of international football. In fact, I find I use international tournaments to fill the void left by the Premier League during the close season. This year however I have been fixated by the first four games of the tournament, finding them both entertaining, and in places exciting, something I have not said about international football from 2002. I had the pleasure of watching the first match in work through a 15inch monitor. The match itself had just about everything; goals, red cards, a penalty and Szczesny doing what he does best. At full time it finished 1-1 and set the tone for the remainder of the competition; frenzied attack, shocking refereeing decisions and of course drama.

Highlights of the opening minute of the game.

The second game between Czech Republic and Russia was a much more open affair with much of the game being played on the counter. It started with about 7 fouls in the opening 10 seconds of open play but quickly developed a pattern of quick, eye pleasing football and ultimately counter attacking brilliance which culminated in Russia's first and second goals. The Czech's never really looked like getting something from the game, even after scoring to make it 2-1. Russia's dominance and ability was telling in their 3rd and 4th goals, a great strike from Dzagoev and a clinical finish from  Pavlyuchenko. After watching the game I couldn't help but think that in this year's competition we might have a winner outside of the European elite.

Deflated: Robben after a poor
performance

Game three provided us with our first shock of the tournament with Denmark snatching a 1-0 win against a team many labelled as favourites, The Netherlands. The game itself was an extremely one-sided affair with the Dutch amassing 28 attempts at goal. The more significant statistic however was that they only managed to put 8 of those on target. Personally Arjen Robben was the main culprit of wasting opportunities by refusing to play the simple pass by instead trying to beat 2 or 3 defenders at a time. Wesley Sneijder was the shining light for the Dutch team that seemed to run out of ideas at times. Some of his passing was simply exquisite at times and his through ball with the outside of his boot to Huntelaar was breathtaking. Van Persie's performance on the other hand was a different story. At times I couldn't believe this was the same player that scored ruthlessly for Arsenal during the Premier League season. His touch at times was reminiscent of Momo Sissoko and his shooting was like Chris Sutton in his Chelsea days. Holland will have every right to feel aggrieved after the game because they had two good shouts for penalties, both of which were waved away by the official. The fact remains that regardless of the refereeing decisions the Netherlands had more than enough chances to put the Danes to the sword and should reflect on how to rectify this in the coming games.  After a defeat of this nature the Dutch will be hard pressed to emerge from a Group that also contains the ever present Germans and a Portugal side containing Ronaldo, Nani and erm.... Raul Meireles.

Game four was the Germans v Portugal and to be honest the first 72 minutes were a complete non-event. Chances were limited as both teams defended vigorously, and Ronaldo failed to produce the type of performance we have come to expect from him in almost every game. The only talking point of the first half  was a chance missed by Pepe, who stayed on his feet long enough to produce a sidefoot effort that struck the underside of the bar, but crucially, was judged not to have crossed the line. Somewhere in Poland or Ukraine, Sepp Blatter wiped the sweat from his brow after video replays confirmed that the correct decision was given. Gomez, who was heavily criticised after the defeat to Chelsea in the Champions League, produced a well placed header to open the scoring. Portugal created the majority of chances thereafter and if not for the heroics of Neuer could have easily claimed at least a point.

Gomez gets the German's off to a flying start with a great header.

So after an eventful four games Euro 2012 has impressed, providing every football enthusiast with a fix of football to help pass the days until domestic football returns in August. If the first two days have given us a glimpse of how the rest of the competition will pan out, we should be in for a great tournament.