Euro Cup 2008 - A Display of the World's Best Football By Cindy Ferguson At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

The Euro Cup 2008 has begun and the eyes of every football fan around the world are fixed between Austria and Switzerland this June to watch the display of top quality football that the European teams have to offer and that's precisely the reason why this event that takes place every four years is considered the second most important football competition in the world, just after the World Cup.

Currently the supremacy of the UEFA football teams is an undeniable fact; statistically the European teams lead the world rankings with 24 of the Top 40 teams on both FIFA World Rankings and World Football Elo Ratings, and all the teams qualified to the Euro 2008 are part of those Top 40 teams except for Austria and Switzerland that were automatically qualified as hosts.

The European Championship started on Saturday June 7 at the co-host Switzerland, with a short opening ceremony followed by the first match of the Group A between Switzerland and Czech Republic where the co-host team was defeated 0-1. The Swiss team also lost one of its best players, the striker and Switzerland's all-time leading scorer Alexander Frei who suffered a knee injury at the end of the first half of the game that will have him out of the rest of the competition.

The second match of the opening day was between the other two teams of the Group A, Portugal and Turkey, and it was a game clearly dominated by Portugal that ended with a score of 2-0 and may have won with a bigger margin as three of their shots were stopped by the crossbar. Portugal is currently leading the Group A and is one of the favorite teams to win the championship; they hosted the Euro 2004 and finished as runner-ups that year against Greece.

The first matches of Group B took place on Sunday; Germany defeated Poland 2-0 and Croatia defeated the other championship co-host Austria 1-0. Monday was the day for the Group C, formed by four Top Ten teams in the World Football Elo Ratings: Netherlands, France, Italy and Romania. This group is considered the "Group of death" of the Euro 2008. France faced Romania in the first game that finished with a 0-0 draw while Netherlands managed to overcome the present World Cup Champion Italy 3-0 in a catastrophic start for the Azurri team that placed it in the last position of the group, situation that the champions will need to eradicate in the remaining two games of the group stage to be able to continue in the competition.

The Group D teams played their first games on Tuesday beginning with a great start for the Spaniard team leaded by the striker David Villa, the man of the match that scored three goals for his team in the first 75 minutes of the game. Roman Pavluchenko scored a late goal back for Russia in the 86 minute but four minutes later Cesc Fabregas scored the fourth shot that closed the game with a deserved victory for Spain. Finally, Greece stumbled in the first step to defend its championship title when it was defeated 2-0 by Sweden. Group stage continue this Wednesday with the second round of matches of the Group A and will finish until June 18th, after this the top two teams of each team will pass to the Quarter-finals of the Knockout stage.

The Championship is just in its first week and though there are some favorite teams already, we'll have to keep watching closely to see who's going to take the Euro Cup Trophy home this time.

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