Yesterday’s games decided who would make it into the knockout phase from GROUP B, and the results were.. kinda not surprising.
Germany met Denmark in the Arena Lviv, and within the first 20 minutes superstar German forward Lucas Podolski put his team ahead, with help from Gomez and Muller. The Danes were not giving up without a fight though, five minutes after the Germans scored, Krohn-Dehli leveled the playing field. The two teams battled it out until the 80th minute, when Denmark’s EURO aspirations were dashed, courtesy of Lars Bender, who scored his first international goal for Germany.
Portugal’s game against the Netherlands was fairly predictable, as the Oranje have given consistently crappy performances since the start of the tournament
(surprising for a team comprised of so many talented footballers that finished 2nd in the 2010 FIFA World Cup). Rafael van der Vaart scored first for the Dutch, this lifted the spirit of the squad for a brief moment, then Portuguese captain (and spokesman for industrial strength hair gel) Cristiano Ronaldo scored the equalizer in the 28th minute. The Portuguese frontman gave a stellar performance from then on, and though the Dutch had a few opportunities, C. Ronaldo positioned the nail in the Netherlands’ coffin and hammered it in with his goal in the 74th minute. The Dutch squad was perhaps the most disappointing of all the participating teams in this tournament; with players like Wesley Sneijder, Arjen Robben and Robin van Persie there is simply no explanation for their appalling performance. On the other hand, fingers crossed for the Portuguese.
So, in the knockout phase so far we’ve got Greece, Czech Republic, Germany and Portugal. Tomorrow we’ll find out who joins them from GROUP C with Croatia versus Spain and Italy versus Ireland.