euro 2008

(Joshua Masayoshi Huff)

Yeah, it's a bit overdue, but we're following the European Championships closely. Saturday and Sunday's games were alright at best--and today's France-Romania game was a snoozer (Henry benched for bruising?!?!), but today's game between Holland and Italy was exciting.

Before the tournament, I had Spain, France, Holland and Germany as my favorites--I know, really going out on a limb, right? But after seeing nouveau France and being less than impressed, I' like to say that one of the three teams are my favorites.

Yes, Holland is playing in the group of death--with them, Italy, France and Romania--but if they get out of the group, they should go far. Unfortunately, the two teams that escape the group of death may have to meet each other in the final--thanks to the new system taht came about from teams complaining about number of days off.

If Holland can shore up their defence (Melchiot and De Zeeuw in the back? Yikes), I'd like to see them win it--they play really fast, open, flowing football that would actually excite the casual American sports fan (if they gave it a chance)

As much as I want to love Spain, they constantly underperform. Their labored win over the US last week wasn't impressive either.

And Germany has the easiest path to the final of any of the major contenders--but they're such an unknown quantity that it's hard to judge how far they'll get (though Podoloski and Klose are beasts).
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And it looks as if we were wrong about Cedric Benson. While boating while intoxicated may be somewhat forgivable, getting a DUI a few weeks later certainly isn't...and thus, the Bears waived him today after telling him to leave practice.