What a huge summer of sport we have to look forward to. Euro 2012, Wimbledon, Tour De France, Olympics, Paralympics, Cricket, Ryder Cup……and the list goes on.
I’m sure you’ll agree it’s a summer of heaven (with sport on our TVs continuously) - though God help you if you’ve chosen this year to get married! If you have and you’ve managed to find a clear day in the calendar, all credit to your organisational skills.
So, I’m signed up and going to be blogging – plus making predictions – right here every week. I’ve also had Freesat installed, which is brilliant. Now, as well as having all the channels I also have BBC iplayer and ITV player on my TV which means I can catch up with anything I’ve missed. This could come in handy if you’re a Best Man, Groom or even Bride who hadn’t thought this summer through. Ha ha.
So, first up in our sport extravaganza is Euro 2012.
It’s been a weird build-up for England fans to this tournament. I’m sure you’ll agree, with the managerial changes and a national team with very little direction, the usual anticipation and hype has been very slow to kick in. However, now it’s here I can’t wait and intend to watch as many games as I can.
For people who follow me on Twitter, I don’t want to say I told you so, but I did - all those experimental teams we tried out were a complete waste of time. As I pointed out,by the time you get to the competition half the players will be injured anyway, so a manager should be brave and choose the team he think will win us matches.
The squad is now chosen and I’m sure we all have our own opinions about it, but we’re a loyal bunch in ‘good old Blighty’ so let’s get behind our boys. My only fear is we set up not to lose. I personally would rather go out with our players trying to win matches and having confidence to show a bit if flair, than being ‘well organised’ and playing not to concede.
The great thing about these tournaments is the hidden talent that we discover. We all know the great players from the top leagues will shine, but there are a few squads where most of their players play in their domestic leagues and are pretty unknown. Its great seeing these players emerge at the end of the tournament with huge transfer fees attached to them. So, unless you study the domestic leagues of Russia, Ukraine or Greece already, look for them.
In this blog I’m going to attempt the impossible job of predicting who’s going to win what. What I will tell you from the outset is I’m going for the Dutch to be champions of this competition. Spain are obviously favourites, but their fellow World Cup Finalist came close and looking through their squad, like Spain, they have some special players who can win matches. I believe this could be their tournament.
So here goes, what I will be watching this week and my predictions.
8th June BBC 17:00 Poland v Greece - draw
8th June ITV 19:45 Russia v Czech Republic - Russia win
9th JuneBBC 17:00 Holland v Denmark - Holland win
9th June BBC 19:45 Germany v Portugal - German win
10th June ITV 17:00 Spain v Italy - Spain win
10th June ITV 19:45 Ireland v Croatia - Croatia win
11th June ITV 17:00France v England - Draw
11th June BBC 19:45 Ukraine v Sweden - Sweden win
Lovejoy’s Disclaimer: I have made predictions for other publications, but the ones here are the only ones I’m being held to as at the time of writing this. I actually know the squads and have studied the form. Though, as we all know if predicting football results was easy than we’d all be rich!
See you next week, where you can judge my sporting knowledge some more.
Tim
