Italy apparently does well in international tournaments fresh off of league match-fixing scandals. Hopefully they fix this game so that they win. I don’t want to say you shouldn’t root for Spain but … root for Italy. The Portugal crapfest turned me off of watching Spain for good. I’m going for a 2-1 Italy win, what say you? Follow me in the live-blog.
The winner of today’s Italy/Germany game needs to beat Spain. Literally. Someone PLEASE beat Spain so I don’t have to witness even more boring football from them. Yesterday’s game was so boring my dad literally fell asleep at halftime and didn’t wake up until penalty kicks.
Link is below:
Spain and Portugal will play in the Wednesday semifinal following Spain’s 2-0 win over a completely uninterested French side. Germany are through after whacking Greece 4-2 when it probably could’ve been 11-2.
England and Italy have not played each other in an international tournament since 1990, when Italy defeated England in the 3rd place game of the Italian-hosted FIFA World Cup. This game could either be entertaining or boring as hell like many English and Italian games. I had neither of these teams advancing out of group stage pre-tournament but here they are each three wins away from a European Championship. I’ve got Italy winning 2-1, and you can follow my incorrect prediction in the link below.
Portugal and Germany are through to the semifinals of Euro 2012. The winner of Spain/France will play Portugal later next week. It should be a great game and I hope you do join me in covering this game and England/Italy tomorrow. There’s a link to the live-blog window which you can click at the bottom:
http://gsnap.com/event.html?id=4116
I’m about to give you a totally invalid guide to the groups of Euro 2012. It’s filled with inaccuracies, terrible predictions, stereotypes, and fake stories. Basically, it’s ESPN without it being presented as serious. Enjoy!
GO GO ESPN!
Never thought I’d write that caption up, to be honest. ESPN will be your home for Euro 2012 in Ukraine/Poland after they acquired the rights to the prestigious European international tournament along with Euro 2016 in France.
ESPN has acquired U.S. broadcast rights to soccer’s European Championship in 2012 and 2016 and will televise every game of both tournaments.
The Union of European Football Associations planned to make the announcement Tuesday.
ESPN purchased U.S. broadcast and Internet rights in all languages. The network televised the 2008 Euros and has U.S. English-language rights to its sixth consecutive World Cup in 2014.
Plans include broadcasting Euro matches on ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN3.com, ESPN Deportes, ESPN Radio and ESPN Mobile.
ESPN did a splendid job covering the 2010 World Cup after that monstrosity in 2006, and the biggest improvement was their commentators. Ian Darke and Martin Tyler led the charge with Derek Rae and Adrian Healey also chipping in good bits for lesser games in South Africa. Darke is probably going to cover this tournament next year but it’ll be interesting to see who will do the final if they do bring Martin Tyler back.
If there’s anything I can request, DO NOT BRING STEVE MCMANAMAN TO ANY OF THE MATCHES!!! Macca offers no substance at all and cuts off Darke way too often on the Premier League broadcasts.
I’m certain there will be an official PR for this tomorrow, but thank goodness ESPN has it. Could you imagine FOX on this? Their other sports coverage sucks enough already, they could ruin this with practically no effort.
