Euro Wrap, June 12

Croatia goes through after beating a weak German side, and Austria overcomes the early-exit host curse after being gifted with a stoppage time penalty equaliser. But first they were punished with an arguably offside Polish goal, so perhaps there was a bit of karma involved?

And we saw our first straight red card today when Germany’s Bastian Schweinsteiger was sent off late in the game for retaliating for an ugly tackle by Croatia’s Jerko Leko.

More on the games, below.

GROUP B	June 12, 2045 CET, Vienna (Austria)
Austria 1 VS Poland 1 Vastic (pen) 90+   Roger 30′

Roger:

Vastic:

Finally, points on the board for one of the co-hosts. Only just though. Austria started much much better and were absolutely abusing the Polish defence for the first 30 minutes. But Artur Boruc wasn’t taking abuse, he was taking names and making saves. Lots and lots of saves.

So when Poland scored through Roger Guerreiroswki in the 30th minute, against the run of play and very possibly offside, it looked like the curse of the co-hosts was about to striker again.

That deflated Austria, and the early momentum disappeared. It looked like staying that way all the way to the whistle, until Bak did some shirt pulling in the box - after Howard Webb had already stopped play and reminded everyone that it wasn’t time to swap shirts yet - and gifted Austria one final chance from the spot.

38 year old Vastic stepped up and banged it home, becoming the oldest goalscorer in Euro history and making sure that predictions of an Austrian embarrassment at Euro 2008 were wide of the mark.

GROUP B	June 12th, 1800, CET, Klagenfurt (Austria)
Croatia 2 VS Germany 1 Srna 24′; Olic 62′   Podolski 79;

This looked like a different German side than we saw on Sunday. Slower, more sluggish, and eminently beatable. And Croatia took advantage of that, (despite starting out slow themselves), repeatedly abusing a weak German right side and iffy goalkeeping in the first half, and scoring in the 24th minute.

Jogi Loew made some changes in the second half that helped a bit, but not enough to keep out another goal after Lehmann failed to collect a shot/deflection and it bounced off the goalpost and directly to the feet of Ivica Olic for an easy tap-in.

Germany finally woke up in about the seventy-fifth minute, and it paid off in the 79th with yet another blast off the prolific foot of Lukas Podolski. But it would prove too little, too late, as Germany couldn’t quite summon up the equalizer.

They weren’t helped by the card-fest at the end, with substitute Bastian Schweinsteiger seeing straight red for shoving down Jerko Leko after a bad tackle, and Lehmann getting a yellow for protesting. Leko saw yellow for the tackle (and perhaps a bit for the “I’ve been hit by a sniper” face-holding collapse after the Schweinsteiger shove?), and a minute later Luka Modric saw yellow for another bad tackle.

All of this was enough to slow down the momentum of the Germans, and the Croatians walk away victorious. This, combined with a draw for Austria-Poland, means that Croatia are guaranteed to go through to the next round, while the Germans will need to continue to fight.

Bracket Watch
Today, 4 points were awarded in our Euro 2008 Bracket Predictor Contest, two for Croatia reaching the quarterfinal round, and two for them winning Group B. That makes a total of ten points out of 120 now on the board. Germany was an overwhelming favorite to win Group B, and so now only 25 of you have a perfect ten out of ten score. Check your standings at http://bracket.worldcupblog.org