Saturday, June 14, 2008
Holland showed that their 3-0 win over Italy was no fluke, and followed up with a 4-1 thrashing of France. Well... Liverpool workhorse Dirk Kuyt headed in the first from a corner, and Arsenal treatment room regular Robin van Persie added a second from a Arjen Robben cross. Robben added one more after France got one back via Barca flop Thierry Henry, and Rafael van der Vaart rubbed it in with a superb long range effort. They join Croatia and Portugal in the quarters.
Italy were lucky to draw 1-1 with Romania. Adrian Mutu fired home a first after a mistake from the Italian defence, but Cristian Panucci equalised. The real drama came in the last ten minutes when Mutu could have thrown Italy out of the competition and could have resulted in Romania being the unlikely team from the so-called Group of Death to advance. Credit to Gianluigi Buffon for the great save.
So this is how things stand...
1 Holland 6 points
2 Romania 2 points
3 Italy 1 point
4 France 1 point
The final group games are Italy vs France and Holland vs Romania. Since Holland is confirmed to top the group and advance, I wouldn't be surprised to see Marco van Basten field a weakened side against Romania, which would give Romania all the chance of getting an unlikely win and advancing with the Dutch. Italy and France, on the other hand, both must win to stand a realistic chance of going through. So one has to lose, if they draw, and Romania loses, all would be stuck on 2 points, and all the ways of tie-breaking would be used... Interesting. Go Romania!
Bye~!
my thoughts at 10:16 am