A championship that ends in a bland 1-0 game does tend to affirm certain prejudices about this sport. And after the wild craziness of Germany-Croatia, Germany-Turkey, or Russia-Netherlands…
Oh, well, it was a fun two weeks anyhow. Congratulations to our Spanish friends!

Only a couple of days before the big European sporting event of 2008 kicks off in Austria and Switzerland. Who will be crowned European football champion of 2008 in Vienna on June 26th?
For my own country The Netherlands, which finds itself in a Group of Death with France, Italy and Romania, the odds do [...]

Looks like I won’t be writing a post like this next year.
[Hat tip to His Imperial Majesty.]

It is by now well known that the main hope for developed societies subject to rapid population ageing who wish to maintain their relative standard of living lies in increasing their collective productivity more rapidly than they increase their dependency ratio via-a-vis the older age groups. Now in the comments thread on the recent ‘Reform [...]

Not a very good game, admittedly, but we’ve made it to Berlin nonetheless.
Considering the level of play displayed by the Italians last night, it will be a daunting task. But then again, so were the two previous games against Spain and Brazil. One can dream. The tens of thousands of people parading in the streets [...]

They clearly deserved a lot better than going down 3-0 today.
Too bad Essien was not on the field : the lack of skilled shooters on Ghana’s part (and an horrendous call by an otherwise pretty good referee) doomed what could have been a tremendous upset.
Here’s hoping Spain or France send this cocky, overrated Brazilian [...]

Yugoslavia used to have a hell of a team. They were regular visitors to the World Cup, advancing to the elimination rounds more often than not. They went to the quarter finals in 1990, and there are plenty of Serbs and Croats who will tell you that they actually came within a whisker [...]

John Kornblum, former US Ambassador in Berlin, knows a thing or two about Germany from his forty years’ acquaintance with the country.

In a nation traumatized by violent upheavals, voters seem to demand an emotional insurance policy before accepting change. This insurance must promise that new methods will not undermine the social and economic [...]

The Independent has an interesting article today entitled ‘Why will a quarter of Spain be supporting England tonight?’ (for those of you who aren’t aware, there’s an international football friendly tonight between Spain and England in Madrid) which looks at how the Spanish national football team is not supported by many of the people of [...]

Earlier today, the draw took place for next year’s European Football Championships (Euro 2004), placing the sixteen teams into four groups:
Group A: Portugal, Greece, Spain, Russia
Group B: France, England, Switzerland, Croatia
Group C: Sweden, Bulgaria, Denmark, Italy
Group D: Czech Republic, Latvia, Germany, Netherlands
The BBC Sport website has a good page detailing all the fixtures for the [...]