And thus it endeth...

[misscam]

Yes, Euro 2004 is over and that means this will be the last football-exclusive post for some time. Yes, I know, you're all heartbroken.

So, it's time to summarize... Cam style, of course.



Underdogs of the Tournament: Greece.

Most Sadly Overrated Team of the Tournament: France.

Most Sadly Overrated Player of the Tournament: David Beckham. (Henry and Zidane both contender for the spot, but did show some quality in the game against England.)

Most Excruciatingly Boring Match of the Tournament: Croatia - Switzerland 0-0

Most Exciting Match of the Tournament: Netherlands - Czeck Republic 2-3

Most Exciting Match of the Tournament Not Due to Gameplay: Sweden - Denmark 2-2

Most Magnifiscent Goal: Maniche scores the second goal against the Netherlands.

Team That Showed Most Promise During the Tournament: The Czeck team.

Player That Showed Most Promise During the Tournament: Tied between Wayne Rooney and Milan Baros.

The "That's the Best You Can Do?" Team of the Tournament: Germany, always sharp during tournaments - except this one, it seems.

Cam's Greatest Moment of Glee: Sweden equalizes to 2-2 a few minutes before full time in the match against Denmark, thus ensuring both Denmark and Sweden go through and Italy is out. Scandinavia rejoices.

Cam's Greatest "What the...?" Moment of Surprise: Tied between Greece scores on Portugal seven minutes into the opening match and France scores twice on England within three minutes just before full time to win the match.

Cam's Greatest Moment of "Ack!": The Czecks scores three goals on Denmark in fifteen minutes after the Danes have pretty much run the match for the whole first half.

The "The Goal is That Way, Are You Blind?" Player of the Tournament: David Beckham. Two penalty misses in two seperate matches.

Goalkeeping Accomplishment of the Tournament: Ricardo for Portugal first saves the English penalty, then shoots the following Portugese penalty himself and scores, sending Portugal to the semi-final and England home.

The "How the Hell Did He Do That?!" Goal of the Tournament: Zlatan scores Sweden's equalizer against Italy by flicking his heel mid-air to send the ball in a lovely loop over the nearby defense player and into the goal.

The "You'd Think They'd Won" Moment: Latvia, ecstatic after a 0-0 draw with Germany secures the country its first ever point in a major tournament.

Proving Referees Can Be Loved: Pierluigi Collina. We love the bald man that is authority personafied.

Proving Referee-ing Is a Most Ungrateful Job: Urs Meier, disallowing England's last-minute goal against Portugal which would have seen England won. Instead it went to penalties and England lost. English fans were not amused. Cue 16 000 hate mails and newspapers printing Mr. Meier's adress.

The "Boo, I say! Boo!" Moment of the Tournament: Francesco Totti and Alexander Frei spit on respectively a Danish and an English player.

The "Mmmm, Cam Likes" Player of the Tournament: The Greek goalkeeper, though I honestly cannot say why. (ETA: Now I know! He looks a bit like George Clooney!)

The "Oh, Shut Up Already!" Special Mention 1: The Norwegian commentators. You are not clever, now shut up and let me watch the game.

The "Oh, Shut Up Already!" Special Mention 2: Gianluigi Buffon, the Italian player, claiming Sweden and Denmark fixed their game. Without having watched it. UEFA tells him to stuff it.

Eyerolling Moment of the Tournament: Francesco Totti tells all reporters he's a greater man than them and elaborates on the theme quite a bit.

Name Most Destined To Crack Up Cam without Fail: Schweinsteiger from the German team.

"You Know Your Fans Don't Love You When..." Moment of the Tournament: Dutch fans buy the Dutch coach a ticket from Portugal because they want him to bugger off. To add to the insult, the ticket is to Belgium.

History Does Repeat Itself: Spain once again fails to do big at a major tournament.

History Does Not Repeat Itself: Greece, having never even won a single match in a major tournament before does manage to do big.

Proof Defensive Play Does Not Pay: Tied between Italy falling back to secure their 1-0 lead over Sweden with Sweden then able to take over the match to secure an equalizer and England doing the same with a 1-0 lead over Portugal and also getting punished by the other team equalizing.

Proof Defensive Play Does Pay: Greece, the most defensive team of the tournament, manages to go all the way.

And the Winner Is...: Greece, of course, making football history and stunning all of Europe.

Comments

[bjam1402.livejournal.com]

*mutters under her breath about the England football team*

But yay for Greece. This'll up their excitement for the Olympics.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

...if they everstop partying and get their venues ready.

amused

[talestra.livejournal.com]

I heard on the Russian TV news prior to final.
"Of course we will be cheering for Greece, after all, we managed to defeat them. So, if they will win, we can say that we defeated the champions" :)

[belegcuthalion.livejournal.com]

The "That's the Best You Can Do?" Team of the Tournament: Germany, always sharp during tournaments - except this one, it seems.

Bwahaaa!

Name Most Destined To Crack Up Cam without Fail: Schweinsteiger from the German team.

Believe me, you can still top it: A german reporter called that poor guy Schweini Schweinsteiger.

[irian.livejournal.com]

Hehe. The underdog won. That must've been a nice upset for fans everywhere.

[puredeadthingy.livejournal.com]

Can I add another?
The 'Oh-My-God-We-Are-Screwed' Moment For England-Wayne Rooney breaking his ankle and getting sent off in the England/Portugal match.
We had the window open and could hear our neighbour swearing at the screen....

[musemistress.livejournal.com]

We were kinda not too crushed by Netherlands losing...somehow we knew our team would have been literally CRUSHED if they won so it was almost a relief.

And can I say...

HTF did that guy score the winning goal 7 BLOODY SECONDS before the end of the 15 minute extension ended at the very freaken end of the freaken game??

You know of whom I speak...he basically leaned forward and bopped it in with his head. *shakes head in wonder*

[sinneahtes.livejournal.com]

^_^ Mom and I were in a taxi going to a Jazz Festival concert up in Montreal last week when we saw a group of people hanging Greek flags out their windows, screaming and honking endlessly - then they went around a few blocks, came back, and did it again. They were still doing it when we got out of the concert. I figured Greece must have won that tournament or something. (Dad was in Switzerland at the time and said Europe was crazy about this whole thing. ^_^;) We were all, "Geez, this whole thing is funny."

Then Mom, that very night in the hotel, stumbled upon a game between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees (generally those are the two baseball teams CT residents are torn between cheering for, as we have none of our own) and is STILL going on and on about the victory of the Yankees in that game.

Yes, I'm still giggling at sports fans. (Not that I'm not silly with what I'm a fan of.) :D

[spade-queen.livejournal.com]

The "Mmmm, Cam Likes" Player of the Tournament: The Greek goalkeeper, though I honestly cannot say why. (ETA: Now I know! He looks a bit like George Clooney!)

Funny...I was watching the final in Park Ex (Greek part of Montreal) and I must have heard that about 50 times ~_~

And Pulsarkat was lucky the Jazz fest is downtown and not in Park Ex or the Plateau, because they mostly closed all the streets off because too much people were partying it up after the final.

Gotta love Football (Now, onto the World Cup!)

[elvea-aure.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. To tell you the truth, I was surprised to say the least that holland actually made it to the semi-finals. After all, I hadn't thought we'd even make it to the quarter finals to begin with, but oh well.

I wanna add a 'Goalie of the Tournament' to this list: Edvin van der Sar, seriously saving Dutch arse in the quarter-finals against Sweden and doing away with the Dutch penalty-trauma. (Go Van der Sar! [waves her 'Van der Sar is my Mary-Sue killer'-banner])

Also, I wanna add 'Fairest player of the Tournament' - Van Nistelrooij, not because he's good-looking but actually is good at football without having to use a lot of foul play to score, and actually handled just about everything like a gentleman, even when he got (unjustified! yellow).

I'm not even going to start on the seven second-goal. Instead, let's talk about that crazy supporter who ran onto the field during the last five minutes of the finals. (Priceless!) And, who were you guys rooting for anyway? I wanted the Greek team to win. Because they have Greek Mythology. And because they were the underdogs. And kinda cute. That, and the Portugese were playing too foul to deserve it. Had it been me as a ref in any game with Portugal, they'd have likely gotten themselves disqualified in, oh, about half an hour, because they're not allowed to play on with only eight players. [facepalms]

So, final addition as aforementioned: 'Best Laugh of the Tournament' - guy running onto the field during the finals and throwing his Barcelona flag at Figo, then proceeding to run into the nearest goal and get caught.

[breathes]

Yup, all done now.

Re: amused

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Yep, only ones to do so. Russia must be so proud.

Of course, not as proud as if Russia had actually managed to get past the group stage...

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Snigger.

It is a name that invites such thing, I fear.Mum and I had endless amount of fun going "Hey, don't be a schwein in that tackle, Schweinsteiger!"

Yes, we are very silly.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

It wasn't just the underdog - it had 80-1 odds on winning before the tournament. It was the under-underdog.

*shakes head* Greece...

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Ah yes. He could have changed the game. On the other hand, he might not have. We'll never know...

But if he gets any better, watch out World Cup 2006!

[misscam.livejournal.com]

He stuck his head out?

But yeah, it was a great "WTF?" moment. First corner to Greece of the match and they score.Bloody hell.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

:P:P:P

There are sillier things to be fan of than sports, you know. Lots of well-trained men running around and you can ogle their asses. What's not to be a fan of?

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Yeah, BBC even nicknamed him Clooniopolous. That's how I finally figured out why I was eyeing him.

Yes, bring on 2006! Hopefully, with Norway qualified.

[misscam.livejournal.com]

Van Nistelrooij - pfffft. The man falls over if any defender as much as breaths on him. That does not earn him 'Fairest player' in my book, no siree. Granted, there were worse offenders of this, but still.

Van der Sar was one of the top three goalies of the tournament, but there were otehrs who did a smashing job as well.

I was of course rooting for Greece, the ultimate underdog. And the spectator thing was amusing (especially if one knows the history of Figo and Barcelona). He was quite fast, too. Now if you'd been running that fast, Portugal...

And I hear Mr. Advokaat is out. I'm sure Holland weeps.

[belegcuthalion.livejournal.com]

Poor Schweini.

*giggles helplessly*

[spade-queen.livejournal.com]

Yup, and Togo!! (Canada is hopeless, so I'll go with my other nationality) Third in their group until now, if we push it, we might. *lights a candle at the Oratory*

[elvea-aure.livejournal.com]

Nonono- I didn't nominate / pick Van Nistelrooij based on the lying down, and the amount of times he did it. (I think the Portugese goalie should be nominated for 'Drama Queen of the Tournament' because he tripped over his phantom foot and spent about five minutes rolling in the grass whining over the fact that his phantom foot was bruised, but that wasn't what I was going to say. Oh well.) I think he should be picked because of the times he bumped into someone per accident / someone bumped into him by accident / on purpose and the person fell, he really made visible effort not to step or kick that person extra, whereas many other players took advantage of the opportunity. In comparison to loads of players, he plays the game gentlemanly.

As for Van der Sar- he just rules (because he does, and has already won an award for best goalie in the world after he scored once from his own goal, though not in this tournament ^_^) so much more because he made the impossible happen- he got the Dutch to win with penalties, where Holland usually just got owned. He's like a national hero now. And a really good goalie, but I already said that. ^_^

Yay Greece!

It was like the guy was saying 'You traitor!' and it really made me laugh. He was pretty fast, yeah, I noticed that too. There are quite a few players who could learn from him... [koffBeckhamkoff]

Yeah, they're looking to replace him. Boohoo. We face such a loss now. And we'll miss him so much... like we'd miss a festering foot, but that's mean so I won't say it.

[sinneahtes.livejournal.com]

:D

To give you your point, I've got my own silly fandoms and I'm certainly not going to ogle the ass of an acting scientist dressed in a light blue lab coat and funny bow tie who used to have a funny science show for kids. :P