So Euro 2012 gets under way this Friday at 5:00 O’clock with
Co-Hosts Poland taking on 2004 Champions Greece.
Listening to the media (non) hype and the fans you would be
forgiven for thinking that England had absolutely ZERO chance of winning this
competition and if I’m brutally honest you could well be spot on. We English
though have always placed added pressure onto our teams - whatever sport we’re
competing in – as wrongly or rightly we generally always think we’re in with a
shout, this must be the first time in my life that England have been given no
chance whatsoever by anybody (barring World Cup ’94 and Euro ’08). Looking subjectively
and applying the Law of Sod this could mean that at 14/1, England without the
added pressure from fans and media alike could well go on and pull off the
biggest footballing shock since Ashley Cole married a woman. The more rational
thinkers may scoff and think I’m talking bollocks and you’re probably right but
if we’ve learnt nothing more from the Greeks (apart from how to get out of
washing up dinner plates and ruin the European economy) it’s that the underdogs
can sometimes pull off the most shocking of results.
Ze Germans will be most people’s fancy to take the
tournament and quite rightly so, they have a wealth of talented stars such as
Ozil, Schweinsteiger, Klose, Gotze, Kroos and Gomez but there is a flaw to the
carefully laid plans of manager Joachim Low and that comes in the form of defender
Per Mertesacker. This lumbering, upwardly non-mobile central defender is a
forwards dream, as he has neither pace, strength nor vision something which
most Arsenal fans will testify to. Having said that ’Die Mannschaft’ look a great bet to win at 10/3, despite the emergence
of Spain and Holland as possible flies in the ‘Metzelsuppe’.
Looking at the betting for Top Tournament Goalscorer I feel
it would be best to look outside of the top 10/15 players (no I’m not mad),
clearly all have great pedigree and will get chances to score bucket loads of
goals but I feel we should look at our comrades from the former Eastern Bloc
Russia. The Russians have 2 top quality strikers that have graced the Premier
League and scored many goals, I am of course talking Pavel Pogrebnyak and Roman
Pavlychenko. Both players are available at around 66/1 and providing they are
fit and playing have the potential to score many goals in what is the weakest
group in the competition.
JD
