Expect Emotions
With the countdown to Euro 2008 completed, football fever has well and truly hit soccer fans worldwide. Expect Emotions - lots of it in this latest edition of Euro 2008 . Football romantics would have you throw the form book out the window, for they will be rooting for the underdogs to upset the big guns.
If you are consulting the stars and crunching numbers to determine the potential winner, let me show you an orthodox 10 steps "history-trending" guide to picking the Champion of Europe.
1. Only one of the last nine winners have been a host nation - that counts out Austria and Switzerland.
2. The last eight winners had all qualified for past European Championship tournaments - that counts out Poland.
3. The European Championship has never been retained - say goodbye to Greece.
4. Germany are the only country to have bounced back from losing a Euro final to win it the next time round - unlucky Portugal.
5. Only once have losing semi-finalists gone on to win the tournament the next time round - that eliminates the Czech Republic and Holland.
6. No world Cup runners-up have bounced back to win the European Championship - so France are out.
7. On only one occasion have the reigning World Cup holder won the European Championship - that counts out Italy.
8. Spain may have one of the strongest squads but they are the under-achiever and it has been 24 years since they last reach a tournament semi-final.
9. The last six winners (France, Holland, Denmark, Germany, France, Greece) all come from first eight letters of the alphabet - say farewell to Russia, Romania, Spain, Sweden and Turkey.
10. That left us with one nation which defy all the above historical conventions…CROATIA !
Disclaimer: The above tongue-in-cheek guide has been made available for general personal use only and is provided without any express or implied warranty as to its accuracy or currency. All use of the information is at the user’s own risk.
Now that you have figured out who is going to win, how much are you betting on them and what are the official odds of them going all the way?
Looking at things like this is always interesting though, and I am somewhat amazed at how many people actually give a lot of weight to these types of things because the past doesn’t necessarily predict the future, especially with sports!
If you take the 10 steps tongue-in-cheek guide seriously, the “official” odds of them going all the way is to become Champion, no less.
In my 20 years of watching and following world football, I would say past results do have a certain influence on current meet-ups between teams.
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