They Finished 7th: GREECE

If ever a nation needed its football team to give it a lift, Greece is that nation, and Greece FC is that team.

Getting to the quarter final might seem a bit of a failure to the team that won it in 2004, but this is a team that consistently over-performs, punches above its weight, confounds the critics.

Of which there are many, but you have to play to your strengths and reduce the impact of your weaknesses and that's what the Greeks do. It may not be pretty to watch, but if you're Greek, you won't give a shit about that.

QUARTER FINAL: Germany 4-2 Greece

Billed as the EuroZone Bailout Bowl by no one except me, the Germans march on to the semi-final, despite resting several key players.

Greece were far more watchable than they have been in the past, but if they'd won this, the German chancellor who was in attendance may well have withdrawn bailout funding.

As it was, Europe wasn't thrown into any more turmoil than it's already in, and my tip to win this thing make the semi-finals where either England or Italy will await.

GROUP A FINALE: Poland 0-1 Czech Rep; Russia 0-1 Greece

Has a tournament group ever been turned on its head so savagely by the final group games?
Russia were by far the best team in the group, thrashing the Czechs 4-1 in the second game of the tournament, and yet it is they who go home and the Czechs who progress. And the host Poles are on their way home (not far to travel at least) after being frozen by fear of failure in all three of their games.
HOW THEY FINISHED: 1: CZECH REP  2: GREECE  3: Russia  4: Poland.

As you'll see from this, it didn't quite pan out the way I predicted. Although it really should have.

Czech Rep 2-1 Greece

Highlights are all I saw of this one, so that means the goals and not much besides. So I could waffle on about the early Czech goals, or about how this result keeps the group wide open, but I can't be arsed.

Poland 1-1 Greece

It's quite possible that we've already had more excitement in Euro 2012 than we did in the entire last World Cup. Two goals. Two reds. A saved penalty. All following a mercifully short opening ceremony.
What more could you ask for, other than a streaker perhaps.

I didn't catch the whole match, just the very start and the very end, but judging from the highlights, what happened in between was positive fayre, unlike the over-cautious dirges that tend to occur in the early stages of tournaments.

I had a couple of lines lined up like Poles Taken Apart or We Came, Warsaw, We Conquered, but neither is apt, or possibly, very good.