Ladies and Gentlement (mostly Europeans),
I have an announcement to make :


Greece clinch European crown

Check this out
http://www.euro2004.com/tournament/M...Report=RP.html

The dream came true

Let the celebration begin

Cheers

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it's one thing that i know for sure, that i know nothing for sure

Congrats to Greece this was a good game and I feel sorry for the Português who really didnt get started and did not imho play up to their best performance.

That's not to take anything away from Greece who defended extremely well throughout this contest.

Great entertainment though.

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Regards.

Michael.

Question: Isn't Greece a musical

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Regards.

Michael.

Rui must be doing :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:


-kwag

Yeah it is a shame the Português didn't win on their home turf they came so close.

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Regards.

Michael.

Hi guys,
I'm not going :banghead: so much, actually.
Ye it's true: the Greeks beat the crap out of us.
My congrats. go to the Greek people for such a magical moment they're living and for the magical moments arriving this summer with the Olympic games in Athens.
But the truth is the truth.
I will not play the cinical part!
I think it wasn't really the Greeks that won against everybody else out there.
The truth is they didn't loose with anybody out there!
While that kind of football is also played by other teams in Europe namely Italy for instance, I don't think that that's the kind of football people want to see when they buy a ticket to a stadium.
That's something that FIFA and UEFA will want to debate in the future.
Should everybody play that way, noone and I mean noone, would buy tickets to a soccer game.
So, again, my congratulations to the Greek people.
To their team and especially to their coach... no further comments.
Just look at the statistics at www.euro2004.com under tournament.
Just look at how many goals they scored.
Look at how many strikes they did. Don't compare that with Portugal.
No, compare that with Holland and with the Czech Republic and remember that these teams didn't do that final game.
Loosing against Holland, England or the Czech Republic wouldn't have been a problem because these teams know what you gotta do to win and that's go out there and score, but against Greece? You gotta be kidding the whole world.
Bitter sorrow for loosing? No way, as I said I could have lost against teams that came here to win.
Bottom line: now soccer will get a lot better.
Since everybody lost against Greece everybody will start playing using they're game strategy: Defense!
That way we'll start seeing games with scores 0-0 a lot and that's good for soccer and the sports.
Maybe that will start right this summer in Anthens.
How wonderful...noone will notice that.
Again, and I can't stop myself from saying this, my congratulation only to the Greek people.
Cheers guys.

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Rui

I know you all know that but it isn't spelled Greece: it's Greese.
And that a hell of a good musical!
They actually did a movie out of it with John Travolta and Olivia Newton.
Great movie
Cheers

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Rui

Actually Greese the movie came first in 1978 and the musical came out much later about 10 or so years ago. To my knowledge.

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Regards.

Michael.

I know this. It's just a joke.

@ Encoder Master

You probably mean "GREASE"!
(You where born in the eighties, right?)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077631/
http://www.prigsbee.com/Musicals/shows/grease.htm

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Big congrats to greece! To your players and ... Otto Rehagel

And, Rui ... congrats to you too as your matches where more than well done!

To all,

our country's name is Hellas

and not Greece anymore
Name Greece is a remainder of the Turk occupation hundread years ago

thanks

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it's one thing that i know for sure, that i know nothing for sure

i was thinking.( if we can call as "thinking") :

Greece is the "cradle of wisdom", wisdom is great for knowledge.

grease is one musical...we can dance ans sing.

grease is an "vaseline" to the hair. hair will be bright and firm.

mixing this all will give:
bright heads and hairs dancing with firm wisdom singing!

oh my GOD...what's that!?!?... we really have time to think a lot of rubbishes nonsense.

Hi Andrej,
typo! I really meant Grease and not Greese
I was not born in the eighties, I was born in '74 and I really think that Grease is the musical movie of the last decades.
I have never seen such a crazy musical movie so enjoyable as Grease afterwards.
Not to mention the whole cast which I think for that era was perfect even with the smallest parts.
It is also one of the best plays in Broadway.
As to the Portuguese matches, I think those were mostly alright with a small touch of mediocre in some matches especially those against Hellas.
Being a sports fan and a soccer fan I think we were not by close the best team, although we have some pretty good players.
We'll have to build a team and to make them much more organized than they showed us throughout these latest 3 weeks.
Of course we only got to 2nd because we didn't play against Germany, Italy and France, not to mention Sweden or Denmark.
And of course we were veery lucky to win against England and Netherlands.
In the end It was a good lucky final 2nd position result for us.
Before the final game I already new that the only way to win the cup would be to hold the game, wait 120 minutes with 0-0 and go for the penalties.
But by doing that I would feel veeery much ashamed for my country's team and even then we would most probably loose beacuse Hellas keeper is very good.
Also I'm very glad the Portuguese people did our best to present the world with a good and well organized European Cup with a lot of fun.
I hope (and I'm pretty sure) Hellas can do even better when they host the Olympic games latter on this summer .
As for Otto...I don't think I even should be talking about his work!
So I'll try to choose my better words to describe it.
I think either he just had no "balls" at all (by making a too much defensive team) or he was smarter than anyone else (as he is today the champion).
That doesn't excuse him of coming to Lisbon not wanting to loose instead of wanting to win! Shame on him for that!
It's strange seeing him making up defensive teams after also seeing him coaching Werder Bremen some time ago.
That was one of the best offensive teams I've seen along side with Ajax, Manchester Utd. and Real Madrid.
But he did make up a very organized and disciplined team.
As fo the Euro2k4 Cup winners (Hellas players) I wish them all the best.
A player is there to play his best and the way the coach wants him to play.
Too bad the coach choose such a tedious strategy.
During the 1st stage games I almost fell asleep watching the Greek game against Russia and Spain...
That's good for the sports and it's a nice way to show children how soccer is played...
About Hellas: that's funny that I only started hearing this name during the Euro Cup.
Is this a recent change of name or have I been away from my newspapers for too long?
As always I send my best to the Hellas people for such a wonderful magical times they are living today.
We are still celebrating our 2nd place here in Portugal and I hope the party in Hellas will go on until the start of the Olympic Games.
Cheers

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Rui

i don't agree with that. it's nor a conicidence neither bad luck, that these teams didn't get to the final. italy simply sucked the first two games, so did germany in the 2nd and 3rd game. (i have to say that, although i tell myself we played alright and just had some bad luck )
portugal did beat the crap out of england this time, what a great game btw. It might have been the other way round though if rooney wouldn't have been injured.
And I also think that greece's strategy made some games kind of boring. however, it was beautiful to see how great they defended against big teams (france, chzeck republic). there's not a doubt that offensive football can be as efficient as defensive football. so i tell myself, that this time there was just not 1 team in the Euro, whose offense could beat greece's defense... see my point?

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j3llyG0053

Hi J3lly,
Seeing your point? Kind of...
But let me tell you one thing.
I'm terribly sorry that I couldn't buy a ticket to any game in the Euro Cup.
Unfortunately either there were no tickets available or when there were I couldn't afford them.
A ticket to the final could cost you more than 1.000€.
Here in Portugal the medium wages/month are about 498€, so you see half a months salary
Back in the end of May I thought about buying 3 tickets to the final, for me, my wife and my son.
That would have cost me roughly 1.200€ total.
I wouldn't imagine that Portugal would be in the final, so I dreamt of a game like Netherlands vs Spain or England vs France
I had the tickets in my hands but in the last minute I withdraw and gave them back.
Lucky me!!
If I'm kinda angry about the final game and I didn't pay to see it, imagine if I had paid 1.200€!!!
That would have really been :banghead:
And I'm talking about a game that I would have seen my team playing in the final!
I just can't understand Otto
I could almost swear that he could have won the Cup playing with a radically different strategy too.
You could see that Hellas just did 5~6 strikes and they almost scored on 3 occasions!
I say he really underestimated his players and did a very poor job, period.
Hellas deserved more self estime from him.
I'm always talking about Otto but there could be other people responsible for that, but he is the "face" of his team.
As to Germany I thought you didn't play as much as you know.
The selected players age was a bit higher than it should have been IMHO.
You gotta find new blood and keep 3 or 4 older players that can lead the "kids".
Like Philipp Lahm for instance.
As for Italy, I saw Mr. Giovanni Trapattoni doing the exact same thing as Mr. Otto Rehhagel.
I also disliked it a lot! With such good players in the team why play for 0-0 for more than 70 minutes? Tss...
England surprised me. Very shy team too! They were holding the game against Portugal with a 0-1 (yes winning!) for more than 83 minutes!!!
Very strange...
Nederlands weren't focused enough in the decisive moments, and I'm yet to be told why Kluivert didn't play against Portugal along side with van Nistelrooij...Discipline problems when you're loosing? Nah!
So that leave us with the best team in the tournament: The Czech Republic!
Yes, they were superb! They had a hell of a good goalkeeper, they had some pretty good defense and they had the best midfield/forward players.
Why didn't they win it?
Because they suffered a corner kick goal in the last 30 seconds of the first 15 minutes of the "added time".
That means they had only 30 seconds to respond that goal as the silver goal ruled this Euro Cup.
That's not fair to a team that did 16 strikes in that game.
Yup I feel like a little 6 year old kid that just realised that the world is not fair.
Cheers J3lly and all

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Rui

God Rui!!!

I'm sitting here drunk in my room, and am just now realising, I've finally found someone at the KVCD community to discuss football with.
I see you're very emotional about it too, so here are some thoughts from my point of view...
Sorry, I totally have to disagree here. Greece was one poor team before Mr. Rehhagel became its coach. There were fights in between the members. Some very good greek players didn't want to play in the national team anymore. Otto, together with his co-trainer settled down these fights, and made up a TEAM finally. It's not that Otto underestimated the team. I think he knew very well what they were able to achieve. Fact is that Greece NEVER won a match in a European or World Championship before this year. How can a team have self confidence with this statistics?? In fact I think that Greece played surprisingly offensive (for greece of course) in the final against portugal.
Your words sound like the greek team could play like brazil or argentina, or let it be Czech Republic. It's not that way. It was a football miracle. Perhaps even bigger than germany winning against uruguay in switzerland 1954...
Seriously, if I was Otto, I'd quit coaching Greece right now. Why? Because he's achieved EVERYTHING with that team. If he has bad luck, and the players get a little more arrogant now, he probably won't get qualified for the World Championship '06 in germany. (on the other hand i also wouldn't want to coach the german team if i were him... ) That would be a disaster after this victory...

about italy, i totally agree... in this championship everybody could watch how fatal it is to score 1 or even 2 goals and then play only defense (see netherlands-chzeck rep., england-portugal, and italy...)
however greece was the one and only team that played VERY effective and succesful defensive football. and that is my point from my post above...

alright, i think i have to be a little harsh with you now... you really should feel like a 6-year old realizing the world is not fair!

the chzeck rep. was the best team in the tournament. agreed. but, they didn't loose that game in the extra time... they lost it because they were unable to score against greece. and that is ok. just like germany. germany was way more offensive, had way more strikes against latvia in that game. still i say they were lucky they didn't loose that game.
that is football. you get punished when you don't score. greece most likely would have lost 3-0 against chzeck rep. if nedved wouldn't have been injured. england would definetely have won against portugal if rooney wouldn't have been injured. in this class (international) there are only little differences in skill between the different teams. it's all psychological.
this is my point of view... have fun reading!!

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j3llyG0053

Hya J3ll
I brought some beer with me today
Let's see...where was I?
Oh, I got it!
Yeah, I love football (fussball in German?) and you can post about it any time.
I'm a sports fan, not only soccer fan.
I love watching FIA-F1, CART, NASCAR (Winston Cup only),MotoGP, DTM, BTCC, NBA and Athletics
(only 100m running, 4x100m running, 4x400m running, 10.000m running, long jump).
While my favorite is FIA-F1 (Scuderia Ferrari fan) I do see more soccer than F1.
That's of course because there is always a lot of soccer matches going on TV
And I like athletics because, while cheating is possible if they take drugs, it's one of those sports that you know
there's not many ways of not playing fair
Either you're faster, jump longer/higher or you fail.
That's not the same with other sports.
So, you see, I prefer lonely sports just because of that.
But team sports are great because they're full of strategy and because they're way more dynamic than the lonely sports
You can have 11 football stars in your team, but if you don't plan well your strategy your fait is to loose.
Now, I know they hadn't won a single game in the final stages of any World/Euro Cup.
But that doesn't mean that he had to make them play that ugly all the way down to the victory.
I have to be honest: I don't like British soccer that much but in the Premier League they always play to win, always!
And that's why their stadiums are always filled up with people.
That's what makes the sports so interesting.
There's also another variable: luck!
To win you always have to have a bit of luck but even then you have to proove in the field that you deserve that bit of luck.
Hellas deserved that luck in some matches, but not on all of them.
I can even admit that they deserved it on both matches against Portugal, but not against the Czech Rep..
And yes: Czech Rep. lost the match against Hellas in the 90 minutes and not in the 106 minute.
But not because they didn't do what they had to do try to score.
That's because they didn't do what Hellas did start playing only after 100 minutes...
So you see, for me they didn't show what's needed to be champions.
Maybe enough to get to the semi-finals, but not to be champions.
IMHO, the final should have been Czech Rep. vs The Netherlands or Czech Rep. vs France, but that's just what I think.
UEFA is very pleased that Hellas won the cup because they were very unlikely contenders but what can we say about Czech Rep.?
Yes, I'm very disapointed with the outcome of the cup but I'm very proud for Portugal and it's 2nd place.
We showed some nice football, maybe a little bit naive but nice anyway.
Maybe we can keep these standards in 2 years in Germany
Cheers J3ll

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Rui