fuck this final team selection is fucking hard.. im second and third guessing myself by the second........

on paper, eurofauxhemians looks a killer team but with selections onn matchday mirror what we expect??? who knows..... man thisis fun and also gonna be a tight competition, in reality and fantasy!!!

is there a way to get some automated info email or something if your players get injured:D? I can't keep up qith my multiethnic team, too many actual formation to keep under observation...gaaaaah!

The system sends you info before each deadline. When a player is suspended or injured, it informs you. But coaches hide many things from the media.

And keeping up with other nations than ours is a nightmare. And I needed to have some elements regarding Romania, Poland, Croatia... Russian players who don't play for StPetersburg...

My goal for the first day is : 10 players on the pitch minimum, 2 subs max.
Hope it works.

And today we're eleven (and probably noone wanting to be the goalkeeper) :

Ball in the Heather (nicfit)
bolanarede (jico.)
Bulldogs FC (Atari 2600)
eurofauxhemians fc (PAULYBEE2656)
FC Gangrape (GrungeMonkey)
George Best's Liver (Bertrand)
Glasgow Enculouz 2 (friend for outside the board)
Los niños del parque (o o o)
Obiku FC (pokkeherrie)
ShongleFest (a human being possibly related to some Monkey)
Tchernobyl Boys (HECKLER SPRAY)

Ok, I'll be the goalkeeper, my right knee hurts and I can't run :p

Portugal 2-0 Turkey
Switzerland 0-1 Czech Rep

pretty terrible start in terms of my team

ah well

Dang, I was hoping I'd be the only one who had Pepe in the team.

Chech = clean sheet
Pepe = goal scorer/clean sheet/man of the match
So far I'm not complaining as far as fantasy football goes... :)


But in the real world's football Robben's out for the game against the macaronis. That's a huge blow for Holland. To have a chance against the ever so solid Italian defence Holland will need speedy attackers that can dribble quickly past 1-2 defenders. Now Robben's out, his best replacement Babel already got injured last week and Van Persie isn't deemed fit enough to start either.... Maybe Affelay will get a starting place now; or Van der Vaart gets moved to the left to get a starting place for Kuyt on the right... or Van Basten will take the risk of starting with Van Persie after all. Either way, none of these are really ideal solutions I think. I'll be happy with a 0-0.

Ironically I had pretty much written off Robben already, just like the majority of Dutch fans I'd imagine. He had barely played and when he played he was most of the time diving or wasting chances by being selfish.
But then he suddenly made a very strong impression in the pre-tournament warm-up games... so strong that he made it to my fantasy team.

When I switched on the TV 5 minutes for the Switzerland-Czech Republic game and heard about his injury I immediately switched on the computer to transfer him out of my team. Because it was just for the dedline I picked the first midfielder I saw for the same price: Deco.

If I'd had two minutes extra to look around before he deadline I would've picked the slightly cheaper Modric instead and upgrade Panucci to Zambrotta... damn.

I had the same hesitations on Saturday before the deadline... I had Deco in my team but wanted to trade him for Robben, since he seemed more likely to score goals and seemed in good shape judging from the friendly games... then learned he would not play gainst Italy... then thought of trading Deco for Modric... but I did not know what to do with the extra 0,5 and eventually decided that I was tired of sitting in front of my laptop thinking on how to rearrange my team, so I kept Deco.

4 minutes into the game, I already regret it...

pokkeherrie's up front with 58 points and more to come.
Don't panic anyone, it's a long way, miracles happen and so on.

Austria didn't look as terrible as I thought they'd be. Croatia was disappointing.
I only saw one half of the German game and they were smashing.

wow! an "activate the wild card" option :D

I used my wildcard this round tp replace Smolarek with Modric. Originally they were both in my team, then when I had to pick one I chose Smolarek for the irrational reasons that I already had a Croat and Smolarek has played for Feyenoord in the past. When I looked at the actual fixtures yesterday and realised that Poland had to play Germany and Croatia played Austria I decided to swap them. Modric scored and Smolarek got a yellow card, so good move.

Haven't seen much of the games yet, only the first half of Switzerland-Czech Republic and then the highlights of the other games. Hopefully I can see some of the France-Romania game at work tonight and then go straight through to the pub for that other game.

tonights games will be crucial to my team i reckon.... ive only 26 points at the moment!

ive activated my wild card too...
come on france!
and id quite like a 0-0 draw between holland and italy
fingers crossed

fuck.. there is my clean sheet gone... fucking stupid linesman..

a mile offside.. a country mile off side!!!!!

don't tell me... my team overall sucked bad till now I (I mean my fantasy team, not my national team),,,,

what the fuck amazing goal!!!

Holland 3
Italy 0

Sorry Nicfit...
You know what ? I've got Van der Sar and Van der Vaart in my team !!!

France sucks ball today, fuck...

goodbye any italians on my team, they were poor. the dutch look great tho. cracking game! roll on the spanish to make my team look half presentable......

I'm not in this game, but just offtopic ... I LOVED to see the Oranjes beat Italians tonight! The Italians just could not stand a chance. They'd probably have missed even a penalty if they got the chance.

And this 3 goal difference might prove important at the end of the group phase... well, only perhaps.

I can still see France not conceding a goal to Holland in the next game, but judging from today's earlier match I have more trouble in imagining France scoring... Maybe a dubious penalty kick will do.

In any case, the next games in this group should still be interesting.

Obiku FC is ranked 22 out of 339,558 players!

82 points !
Some start !
Go pokkeherrie, go !

(and crash later)

Funnily, in the past competitions, I expected the Dutch to go farther than they eventually went, and this year, I blandly believed they'd be the weakest side and Romania, along with either France or Italy would qualify.
How wrong one can be.

My team is shit.
Fuck Jogi Löw, i thought he would give Schweinsteiger the chance to play the full game.

The Dutch were really good and Austria was kind of a surprise aswell.

anyways,

Go Spain, score some points for me, please!

i needed france to win
and holland italy game to be a draw
surely that was a more likely outcome
im fucked now
hahah

I just realized Captains get their points doubled... I shall read the rules better...well, go spain, go wohever I've got in my team....
I'm just glad that in the "real world" we'll be world champions for 2 more years ha ha .

I suppose it's unnecessary for me to inform you all that I had a highly enjoyable night at the pub yesterday... what a game. :eek:

I never knew the current Dutch side would be capable of such brilliant counterstrikes like the 2nd and 3rd goals, both starting with a save on their own goalline. Van Bronckhorst was the man of the match for me, his role in that 2nd goal was amazing, even better than scoring that last one.

Of course Holland's got a good chance at progressing to the next round now, but anything is possible and group C has still everything to play for. Italy aren't killed off yet; I think they played better than France and Romania did. The final group game between Italy and France could be a battle of life and death.

I couldn't believe it when I saw that... as if yesterday's game wasn't good enough already! :D

To be fair, I have to share the 22nd spot with 5 or 6 other people and I'll definitely drop a few places today because I don't have any group D players in my team. But for a few more hours I'm the highest ranked Dutch player in the game.
http://en.fantasy.euro2008.uefa.com/...ry=152&phase=1
(just needed to brag about that before the opportunity is gone)

Sounds familiar.... :D
great great match yesterday, holland played a wonderful game, kinda unexpected.

No, it wasn't! :)

Like many, i thought it was offside too, but my mate immediately said it wasn't because of Panucci still being behind the backline... turned out he was right, minutes before the commentator noticed that as well.



Agreed. I couldn't see the full game but from the highlights it seemed that Austria really deserved a draw. Maybe they'll have more luck in the other games. It's always good for a tournament to see the host nations do well.

Yes he was behind the goal line but he was also completely off the field and not in play, laying on the floor. Still it was a good result and Italy really did look quite old didnt they?

Hmmm, I think the rule should be applied only when a player goes "willingly" out of the backline or at least when he can come back into the field and be considered as an "active player"..that said, orange people deserved to win by 3-4 goals even without that possible "gift" :).

I definitely hadn't expected it... I thought a 0-0 would've been a good result.

Kuyt's often slagged of for his lack of skill compared to the other Dutch forwards (ball bounces 1-2 meters from his foot etc), but he's got a work rate that is exceptional. As long as he, Sneijder and Van der Vaart are prepared to run back all the way to their own box to defend when needed, then the Dutch defence doesn't have to be as weak as we all thought it would be. Before the tournament started, Sneijder and Robben were the players who looked in great shape. Sneijder played very well (it was his 24th birthday too) and Robben can now work on his comeback (likely to be the Romania game) without having too much pressure on it. Van Persie didn't look bad either for someone who hasn't played since April.

In the Italian team Ithink Materazzi and Barzagli were the weak links yesterday. I would say Pirlo even played a great game. he almost scored twice, but was unlucky that his efforts were saved and Holland scored immediately after both times. Donadoni surprised me a bit when he took off Di Natale while being 2-0 down. In between the 70th and 80th minute I wasn't confident yet on a Dutch victory. If Italy had scored 2-1 then I don't know if Holland's defenders would've kept their nerves.

He was active, because he hadn't left the pitch with the referee's permission. He could've gone back into the pitch at any time.... which he did immediately after the goal was given to go complain at the referee. :)
He may not have left the pitch "willingy", but he would have had benefit from it had he been inactive.

Ha ha ok. It doesnt make much difference anyway and Holland certainly did look good. A Germany/Holland final perhaps?

I reckon Germany or Portugal could be very likely, but Holland is still very far away... I still rate France, Italy and Spain higher than Holland at the moment and it's possible they'll have to play all three of them.

Its as wide open as the wide open Beaver of Nashville.

Honestly it's from before the tournament even started that I think italy should care more about scoring goals than defending...
the backline isn't much good this year, while we have a potentially lethal midfield/attack (cassano del piero di natale toni camoranesi boriello qualgliarella perrotta de rossi can all do good things ). I think we'll need faster fullbacks (grosso did good) to get some more playable balls for the attack...yesterday when a more offensive team was on the field the game was already on 2-0 and holland could afford to defend and wait for a good counter attack chance.. next time we should attack right from the start and keep the opposing team under pressure for the entire game.. my prediction for future defensive lineup: zambrotta on the right, grosso on the left, chiellini and (sadly) barzagli ...

Zambrotta looked pretty good as well. Much has been said about the Italians being old (average age over 31 years and that's not counting the 34-year old injured Cannavaro) but I don't think they're too old.
I agree with Italy needing some faster backs though because France will have some speedy forwards too.

It's too bad I can't watch the Spain game tonight.

i heard today that the ref claimed it was onside because the player didnt ask permission to leave the field of play!!!!! talk about saving face... he was off the pitch therefore off the field of play and so the goal was offside.....

it would be more important if it remained 1 nil but holland were great!

my god pokkeheirrie. you are 22nd overall in the standings and the top dutch player!!!!!!!! fairplay... catch up time

compared to me...

134,411 places behind overall and up to 7430th in ireland! gah!!!