No one cares about Soccer. This is America, buddy. F*** yeah!

I had to come back on that, it's not happening.... the euro cup 2004 was a luky mistake for greece.... lol sorry for the off post but as european I had to react to that one ;)

Sorry to come back to this, but why call Greece lucky?

A team that goes to the final without having conceded a single goal in the knock-out phase is not exactly "lucky".

Also the same team managed to beat Portugal twice, draw Spain, and go on to beat all other teams in the competition.

You can claim that Greece did not play good football, because they were basically ultra-defensive then claiming victories by set pieces.

But it was not just luck that gave them the cup. You can't beat Portugal twice, Czech Republic and France, in consecutive victories with no conceded goals if you are just lucky.

They had a plan and sticked to it greatly. Their football was dissapointing in its lack of show and style, but they won the end result.

Also, it is very important to notice that Greece U19 went to the finals of the Euro U19 as well, although lost 1-0 to Spain. This shows that in general, Greece is becoming a better team in football overall -- especially if you take into account that in 1994 they were basically the second worst team of the entire world cup, just marginally better than Saudi Arabia.

To go from second worse of the world to first in Europe for adults and second in Europe for youth team, and also have your current adult team lead ths division of the new Euro 2008 competition by 5 points, shows you are up to something better.

wow, I love how this thread is still going strong.

although it is probably the most off-topic one on vgchartz

LOL LOL LOL sorry I didn't read the thread and thought I would be the only one going off topic.....

why I call greece a luky mistake is because if you'd replay that euro cup 20 times you can ben sure that greece would be wining less than 10 times....
2002 world cup and 2004 euro were total mess for the football nations.... and it's not because of france that I'm saying that... we actually sucked ass like brazil did in 2006 (and even more in our 2002 case)....
Greece is not a bad team, they are just not the kind of team supposed to win a competition like euro cup.....
it's also if the big football nations player would stop for a second to have a head bigger than elephant ass, start playing football instead of doing beauty contest in the last vogue or counting their money to show to each other who can piss gold the further... you wouldn't see greece in that position.....
greece choose the right time to implement an efficient strategy..... but at the end what I meant is greece displayed a smarter football than they use to usually and the other nation sucked ass way more than they are supposed to... the combination of both gave the cup to greece.....
So yeah they deserved it.... but it still shouldn't have happened.... but that's what's great about football, everybody as a chance if they know when to pick it....

ok so now I read the entire thread LOL... that's awesome to have some REAL FOOTBALL fans here.... lol... you can't imagine how painfull it is to be in USA.... where football is a game where you play less than 30 second in a raw before a commercial break and were they were pads to protect from contacts lol gay :)
just teasing guys :P (i love american Football too DA BEARS, DA BEARS, DA BEARS, DA BEARS)

So 2006 final sucked ass..... Italy winning is the biggest BS I have ever seen in a world cup.... germany deserved to win that one.... Buffon was effing amazing though.... now about 2008 EC, I would give germany if they keep the good work.... but you can have a lot of underdogs.... I think this one will be more interesting than 2002

I might be mistaking Saudi Arabia with some other team. Even if this is the case, this is even more impressive that a team went from being a joke of a football team to the top of the Europe in just 10 years. That's some progress there.

I am not saying that Greece is a top-notch football team. But they have improved significantly, to the point of being respectable. They have good defense and are very good at set pieces. Their attack lacks star players and their middle line is usually crap. However their good defense makes up for that, most of the times.

Unlike other teams, they rely heavily on not conceding any goals. If Greece gets a goal down, they are unlikely to come back because their goal scoring tactic is opportunistic.

In other words, they play for the 0-0 and hope they get a goal in there. This has been their tactic throughout Euro 2004 and they use the same tactic so far in the new Euro as well.

What's interesting to notice is that the Greece U19 that went on to the finals of Euro 2007 U19 have been the exact opposite of their adult team:

They are fast, they play aggressively (scored 3 goals to Germany), they play solid (but not exceptional) defense and their middle is improved. They show some good promise.

"Greece is not a bad team, they are just not the kind of team supposed to win a competition like euro cup..... "

Very much agree. I believe they are a considerable team whom other European teams should start to respect. They are not a great team, but they are not a bad team either. They can lose spectacular wins and they can also defeat greater teams against strange odds. They are unpredictable, and that is possibly their greatest asset.

They can beat Portugal 2-1, tie Mexico 0-0, lose to Brazil 0-3, lose to Albania 0-3, annihilate Bosnia away from home 0-4 and barely scrape a win to Moldova at the last moment 2-1, all in the span of 3 years.

I don't have a chance to follow Austrian football, but I know who Hermann Maier, Benjamin Raich and Michaela Dorfmeister are. Does that count for anything?

I'm going to have to go with England, although I'm sure they'll get my hopes up only to come crashing down... again :(