I am looking forward to an exciting and action-packed tournament (though I have to say that I was opposed to the idea of expanding the tournament to 24 teams, as this somewhat cheapeans the whole qualification process, mainly because “big guns” like Italy and Germany do not need to be constantly on their toes and may regard some of the qualifying matches as friendly games suitable for experimentation, though we also have the recent counterexample of a football powerhouse such as the Netherlands missing out despite the easier qualification format)!
I have been very impressed with Slovakia’s performance in Euro 2016 qualifying, I hope that they will continue to shine in France. However, I think that the omissions of Róbert Vittek, Marek Bakoš, and Martin Jakubko may come back to bite them, as they lack depth in the offensive department. I will also be keeping my fingers crossed for Ukraine, because I have always had a soft spot for them due to Andriy Shevchenko and the way in which they have been unlucky in the playoffs for major (they were elimninated in the play-off ties for the Euro 2000, 2002 World Cup, 2010 World Cup, and 2014 World Cup) tournaments. Also, I hope that a good performance of their national team could help heal some of the wounds due to the Euromaidan and its political & social fall-outs.
I like Poland, Hungary, Northern Ireland, Ireland, Wales, Iceland, and many of the other participating teams as well. It is amazing how much Iceland and Northern Ireland have managed to progress in just a few years and how many talented footballers they have been able to produce. I remember reading about Iceland’s 2:0 win over Italy in a friendly match held in 2004 at the Laugardalsvöllur stadium in Reykjavik, in which 20,204 Icelanders (approximately 1/5 of the capital’s population) attended the match, so it seems as if this Nordic country’s passion for the beautiful game is not that far behind the one displayed by the Latin countries. Spain, Germany, and France are the clear favourites, but I hope that a team from Eastern or Central Europe will somehow emerge victorious.
It’s quite disappointing that the final squad nominations for Germany, France, and Switzerland leave a lot to be desired. The ageism in soccer (it baffles me that Robert Huth - who marshalled Leicester City F.C.’s defense really well and also provided a credible offensive threat – was left out of the team for supposedly being too old) is another relatively new trend that I find unappealing in many respects. I agree that Miroslav Klose has not been consistent for S.S. Lazio, but maybe it would have been nice to let him sing his swan song on European soil. I also find it difficult to understand the reasoning behind so many star players deciding to retire prematurely from their national teams (Philipp Lahm and Ryan Giggs are some of the footballers who set the tone for that). Something else that is quite odd is that many European nations naturalize foreigners that are actually not that better than their own players – Slovakia issued a passport to the French-born Togolese Karim Guédé in 2011, Brazilian Marcos Antônio Malachias Júnior - Marquinhos earned his first cap for Bulgaria in the same year, Brazilian Renan Bressan began playing for Belarus in 2012, Brazilian Henrique Luvannor donned the colours of Moldova in 2013, etc. None of these footballers significantly improved the performances of the nations that adopted them and no longer seem to be on the NT managers’ radar (they do not even make the bench). It also appears to me that advanced football age considerations rarely factor in the decisions regarding the viability of going ahead with the naturalization of foreign players.
@Frederic, shocking scenes, an occupied police car actually being set ablaze in broad daylight, I never thought something like that could happen in Western Europe. I am guessing that these masked guys are radical leftists or anarchists who believe that the current French government is not sufficiently left-wing?
she figured it was pointless. Anyway, it didn't give me much confidence in their security. After the Paris attacks last November dozens of Muslim staff lost their security clearance because the police found evidence that they were jihadist sympathizers. 