Euro Wrap, June 16

One game that really mattered. One game that kind of half mattered. Maybe. If the stars aligned.

The top spot in Group B was determined last week: Croatia.

All that was left to be decided was which other team would progress to the quarterfinals and which two would go home. Germany needed any kind of points — either a win or a draw would take them through. Austria would have needed to beat Germany, and to keep a better goal differential than Poland. And Poland would have needed Austria to win, and more goals, and for lightning to strike three times directly on the center dot of the field in a space of thirty seconds.

Or something like that.

Here’s how the games played out.

GROUP A	June 16, 2045 CET, Klagenfurt (Austria)
Croatia 1 VS Poland 0 Klasnic 53′

Slaven Bilic gets the honor of shepherding his squad to first in the group and earning the first, perhaps only, perfect score in the group stages; while Poland is summarily dispatched in last, leaving team No. 16 of the tournament, Austria, in 3rd place, ready for the UEFA Cup (or just a cookie).

Maybe the most impressive aspect of the game was that Croatia came to win, when they could’ve come to hopefully knock Germany out of the tournament a bit earlier than expected by laying down for Poland. But the end result was very simple: Croatia’s second string is better than Poland’s first and a half string (their injuries have come early).

The goal went to Ivan Klasnic….

…incredibly deserving after his two kidney transplants in 2007, but there were three players who stuck out most:

Artur Boruc: If not for him, this game was at least 3-0, maybe more. If UEFA doesn’t include him in their team of the tournament, it’ll be more criminal than any of the host of refereeing decisions we’ve had thus far. There have been some decent keeping performances, but he single handedly kept this team in the tournament.

Ivan Rakitic: Always talented, the talent seems to be translating. Didn’t start the game against Switzerland but did against Germany and it’s becoming quite clear the future of the Croatian midfield is in phenomenal shape. We could put Niko Kranjcar, Luka Modric and Ivan Rakitic up against any middle third in the world.

Danijel Prajic: His name belongs next to “marauding” in the dictionary. Pacy and skilled, his crosses are like a pitching machine: perfect every time. This guy is clear team of the tournament material so far.

Poland will certainly be disappointed at their performance, but with so many injuries and some young blood coming in, they’ve got a lot to look forward to as they (most likely) host the 2012 version. Croatia, on the other hand, now gets to prepare for Turkey on Friday.

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GROUP B	June 16th, 2045 CET, Vienna (Austria)
Austria 0 VS Germany 1   Ballack 48′

After Germany’s rather dismal play against Croatia, I think that their goal was to prove that they have what it takes to go all the way.

They were not completely unsuccessful. But they weren’t completely successful, either.

On the plus side for Germany, they won. But they didn’t win decisively. In fact, they had a few moments like this one:

Ouch. So much for my pick of Gomez for Golden Boot, eh?

But Germany did just enough to get the job done, and Michael Ballack did just enough to show that he still has the potential to offer something big to any game. Check out his free kick, the only score of the match:

Germany wasn’t all that convincing, and if Austria had had players who could finish, the story might have been different. Unfortunately for Austria, they didn’t. But they made some gutsy forays into the German side, and they didn’t look half bad most of the time. They did not embarrass themselves. They just lost.

But is is kind of sad that the most interesting part of the game took place off the field, when both coaches were sent off for “constant bickering.”

Germany faces Portugal in the quarterfinals. Let’s hope for a little more energy, to keep us neutrals awake.

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Here’s the final Group B table:

GROUP B - Teams		Pld	W	D	L	GF	GA	Pts
	Croatia	3	3	0	0	4	1	9
	Germany	3	2	0	1	4	2	6
	Austria	3	0	1	2	1	3	1
	Poland	3	0	1	2	1	4	1

Complete Euro 2008 group standings here.

Bracket Watch
We have a single leader now in the Euro 2008 Bracket Predictor. Elena from Russia is the only one out of 1005 entries that has a perfect score so far. 34 points have been awarded so far, out of the total of 120. A lot of us dodged a bullet today, because over 95% of entries picked Germany to advance to the quarterfinals, something they managed by only a single goal today. Check out your standing at bracket.worldcupblog.org.