Euro 2012 Countdown: Group A

20May 2012

EURO2012

In many aspects the European Championships is a tougher tournament to win than the World Cup. There may be only 16 nations in the finals compared to the 32 nations at the World Cup but there are no even remotely easy fixtures. Group A is an interesting group with three eastern European sides along with the 2004 winners Greece. We have the host nation Poland, Russia, Greece and the Czech Republic.

There have been co-hosts before in the European Championships but this time it would not be surprising to see both home nations fail to make it beyond the group stages. Russia are always a tough proposition and they got to the semi-finals in 2008 and Greece were winners in 2004. The Czech Republic are not as strong as in recent years and they too were finalists as recently as 1996.

So we have three countries that have all had good runs in this event in recent tournaments and that spells a tough proposition for Poland who did not have to qualify and so could lack match sharpness coming into this event. Poland have been fortunate to avoid the really big favourites in their group and their fans will fancy their chances but it really could be anyones guess as to who progresses from Group A. Polish coach Franciszek Smuda (pictured) will be under pressure for sure because not qualifying from this group will be seen as failure by the Polish people.