Can Croatia or Ireland deliver a shock against favorites Italy and Spain?
By Andrew Mcewen Source:Global Times Published: 2012-6-13 22:55:03
Tonight should be the most exciting night so far in an already-exciting Euro 2012, with the prospect of an upset in either one of two big games: Italy vs. Croatia and Spain vs. Ireland.
On paper, both games might look easy to predict but this beautiful game is only that easy to foresee for octopi.
Consulting my own more fallible crystal ball after the first round of games, I foolishly tipped Italy to win the whole tournament, a rather risky thing to write, especially as I am almost certain "Croatia" is Italian for "kryptonite" - Italy haven't beaten their Mediterranean neighbors in five meetings since Croatia declared independence from the former Yugoslavia in 1991.
So let me quickly readjust my position and hope that nobody notices by adding that I also quite fancy the Croats, without being sure how much their last result came about from them being good or Ireland, well, being Ireland.
Ireland must now fight for their lives against Spain, creating the chance of an upset if Spain still struggle to find their scoring boots. Historically and in almost every other sense, the Irish tend to reserve their most heroic performances for just these types of hopeless causes and so although it might look like a comfy mug of cocoa and a pair of slippers for Spain at halftime, it probably won't be.
It's hard to think of a more extreme contrast in styles and my other bold assertion yesterday that Spain and tika-taka are on their way out looks liable to fall apart in a feast of goals for the previously profligate Fernando Torres.
Indeed, if my cephalopod mollusk-based instincts are correct, an angry mob of Spaniards are already forming outside our cavernous Global Times corporate nerve center to remind me of precisely that prediction when Spain lift the trophy at the end of the tournament.
Spanish fans might get their chance even earlier if their team plays England in the quarterfinals, the kind of one-sided contest that looks all too easy to predict, with or without eight legs.