Euro 2012 - Impressions so far

The Euros are officially here! Weeks of glorious, dramatic, unpredictable football. And so far its been pretty decent. The opener between Poland and Greece was incident packed with two red cards, two goals and a penalty save. Poland played pretty well at times and had some good chances but having said that they allowed a game they should have dominated to slip away from them so its pretty hard to tell at this point whether they have enough to get through. That of course depends on the Czech Republic and whether they can recover from their opening defeat. Clearly the Czechs had a problem at the back with their defenders all over the place at times which desperately needs sorting out. However some of their players look quite decent for instance Petr Jiracek was lively and put in a good shift and Vaclav Pilar looks handy down the wing. Russia looked impressive, Andrey Arshavin seems quite rejuvenated and I'll be very interested to see how Alan Dzagoev continues in this tournament. I need to catch up on Germany's group so more details on that when I know them. Then we have today's matches. Spain v Italy was certainly an interesting match on paper but didn't turn out exactly as we may have suspected. When I saw that Spain were playing without a centre forward I was very very sceptical and I believe my exact words were "What? But that doesn't make any sense." I was proved right by the match itself. Spain had a lot of possession but never looked all that dangerous and besides their equaliser didn't create many significant chances at all. Italy on the other hand proved the error of Spain's tactical choice. Antonio Di Natale's goal perfectly demonstrated the importance of a good forward. His run onto Pirlo's through ball was perfectly timed and his finish was impeccable. Andrea Pirlo's run through midfield was pretty damn impressive too. But Italy looked much better than I expected and seem to carry quite an attacking threat. I think this group could get very interesting especially given Croatia's impressive win over Ireland. Croatia were good value for their win and their passing and movement looked pretty sharp. I predict some drama in the coming games and I wouldn't bet against a very close finish.