Although Ricardo tried desperately to intercept the ball, he had misjudged the wrong direction. He couldn’t wait for the ball to fly into the gate behind him.
Four to two! After 120 minutes of hard work and a cruel penalty shootout, Italy finally became the first team to advance to the final of the European Cup!
Chapter 1275 After the game
Defending champion Italy successfully advanced to the host country Portugal, and the day after the penalty shootout, all the fans who paid attention to the European Cup got the news through the media.
Italian fans are naturally very happy with this result. Although the team’s promotion to this European Cup is a bit difficult, for Italian fans, they don’t care how ugly the process is. A good result is always much more important than the process.
However, although the game has ended with the referee’s whistle, it is obvious that the storm caused by it will not pass so easily, or that the storm that swept the whole Portuguese football has just begun from the moment the game ended.
After all, the Portuguese Football Association has high expectations for hosting the European Cup in Portugal, or it can be said that from the first Portuguese Football Association, the goal has been set at the final championship trophy. To achieve this goal, they have set a number of convenient conditions for Portugal, that is, to increase the chances of winning the national team in the country.
What surprised the Portuguese Football Association even more was that the European Cup was always unpopular from the beginning. Although Portugal lost to Greece unexpectedly in the opening match, they were very depressed, but then the team’s first place in the group successfully qualified, which made them quickly forget this point. At the same time, Spain, England, France, the Netherlands and other favorites lost their horses one after another, which also made the Portuguese Football Association more confident in winning the championship in the country.
However, it is such a Portugal that occupies a favorable geographical position and has a physical advantage, but it was twice led by its opponent in the match against defending champion Italy. However, they were able to survive on the young Cristiano Ronaldo twice and finally lost to the Azzurri 24 in the penalty shootout. This process and the ending really made it difficult for Portuguese fans who were determined to win the championship.
I have to say that the Portuguese Football Association is really fantastic. Although hosting the European Cup in the soil does have a certain bonus for the host country, it is obviously fantastic for Portugal to win the Delao Cup because of this, so that its overall strength can be barely regarded as the firstclass level in Europe.
Even in Zhuang Ge’s previous life, Portugal was able to reach the final because of the luck of strong teams, but in this way, they finally lost to Greece, the biggest dark horse in the 4 European Cups, which said a lot.
Rui Costa can be said to be the player most affected by this defeat. Portuguese fans and the media are accusing the midfielder of missing the key penalty. He should take the main responsibility for the team’s exit in the semifinal of the European Cup.
I have to say that fans are always the most forgetful group, and the media are always the best at fanning the flames in have it both ways. At this time, these people seem to have selectively forgotten that Rui Costa has made great contributions to the Portuguese national team in the past ten years, and they don’t remember that it was he and Figo who made Portugal jump from a secondand thirdrate team to a European powerhouse and led the team to achieve good results second only to Eusébio’s era.
In all fairness, the Portuguese midfielder played a very good role in the semifinal. He organized and dispatched Portugal to control the whole midfield situation in the game, and suppressed Italy in the halfcourt. They were almost unable to play their best defensive counterattack, and pauleta in front created a number of scoring opportunities. Unfortunately, Portugal lacked a top striker like Shevchenko or Rebrov to turn these goals into goals, and there were opportunities for secondrate goods like pauleta, Gomez and Postiga to constantly wave.
However, compared with the condemned Rui Costa, the Portuguese striker group, which has been waiting for opportunities since the European Cup, is treated much better, or Portuguese fans have not expected much from their cheating striker since the beginning, so they naturally blame pauleta less.
The response to the overwhelming criticism of Rui Costa by Portuguese fans and the media is also very direct. Shortly after the team was eliminated from the European Cup, the midfielder announced his retirement from the national team. The semifinal of the European Cup with Italy also became a curtain call performance for Rui Costa in the Portuguese national team. This is another story, so I won’t go into details here.
After the host Portugal was completely eliminated and bid farewell to the Delao Cup, the CzechGreek showdown was also won at the Porto Fire Dragon Stadium. Greece, the biggest dark horse in the European Cup, led by Severiano Reija Geer, once again created a super upset. They relied on tenacious overall defense and a silver ball at the last minute of overtime, which will have the Czech Republic eliminated from the competition for the first time in history!
Years ago, at the last minute of the European Cup final, he died in the international competition for the first time, and then fell on the last minute of the game, which is probably the last silver sphere in the history of football. I have to say that the Czechs are really unlucky, which also makes them wear a coat of tragic heroes.
Although the Czech Republic’s exit is more tragic, it is always killed by the opponent in the final stage. It also tells a problem from another angle that they are prone to lack of attention in the dominant situation, otherwise just bad luck can’t explain this strange situation.
Of course, after Devid, a group of talented golden generations, withdrew from the national team one after another, the overall strength declined sharply, and the Czech Republic didn’t even have a chance to fight until the last minute of the game. In the final stage, this problem naturally didn’t play much.
In this way, with the tragic exit of the Czech Republic and the tickets for the European Cup finals, the two teams finally announced that the defending champion Italy will have a peak showdown with the super dark horse Greece at the Ries Stadium of Light on July 4, and the winner of this game will be the king of Europe!
Chapter 1276 Before the final
The news that Greece beat the Czech Republic in the semifinal and reached the final of the European Cup for the first time broke the glasses of several experts. No one could have thought that Greece could win a ticket to Reese after unexpectedly qualifying for the European Cup.
Therefore, when people saw that Greece really stood out from a strong team and Italy successfully joined the European Cup finals, a lot of praise was immediately poured out to Greeceof course, most of them praised the Greek coach for creating the miracle of Kaiserslautern, Severiano Reija Geer.
Most fans believe that the success of Greece in the European Cup can be attributed to Otto the Great. Without this coach’s strategizing and ironfisted management, it is still unknown whether Greece will reach the European Cup finals or not.
Although the Greek style of play is very dull and unsightly, and the team lacks enough bigname stars, all these have made the star flavor of the European Cup final a lot lighter and a little more grassroots, but the fans still warmly welcome the upcoming European Cup final, and they have not lost their passion for this decisive battle because of the fading star flavor.
After all, people tend to treat grassroots teams like Greece with a very broad attitude, especially when they play far beyond people’s expectations. Except those who stubbornly insist that offensive football is real football, most fans admit that this Greek team is strong and many neutral fans have become their supporters.
The influence of Greece’s entry into the European Cup finals is far more than that. The most important point is that most of the coaches in this European Cup have changed their inherent football concepts and turned to study the overall football tactics!
If Ranieri Chelsea’s winning the Champions League in a promising situation has made people realize the importance of overall football, then the doubt that Severiano Reija Geer led Greece to win a series of results in the European Cup has once again deepened people’s understanding and understanding of this concept.
No matter how strong a player is, he can’t score easily even if he is Ronaldo or Diego Maradona. When a team can play highquality team football both offensively and defensively, he can get good results in the game even if there are no superstars with superior ability in the team. This is the change of football concept given by Greece and Chelsea.
Therefore, as Greece goes further and further in the European Cup, team football and physical defense thrive in European football, and more and more teams pay more attention to the team rather than formulating tactics around a certain star to win through the individual ability of the star.
However, in the eyes of fans, Italy is still the most promising team to win the championship trophy. Many people think that Italy is very promising to break the European Cup defending curse and become the first team to successfully defend the Delao Cup!
After all, Italy and Greece are too similar in tactical play. Both teams focus on defensive counterattack tactics, and both advocate relying on strict defense and concise quick counterattack to win in the game instead of expecting a superstar to have an epiphanyperhaps Italy used to rely on vieri’s personal ability in attack, but since this European Cup, Italy has also paid attention to teamwork on the offensive end.
Milito was able to top the scorer list in the European Cup mainly because his position was that the finishing point of the team’s attack would naturally get more chances to score goals. It is not that Italy can count on him to score goals in the game. In fact, if Milito were replaced by vieri or Tony, the effect would not be much worse.
Although the public opinion is almost overwhelmingly in favor of the Italian championship, in the Azzurri, from the head coach trapattoni to his players, they are not affected by these sounds, and they are still extremely vigilant about Greece.
Perhaps before the European Cup, no strong team coach regarded Greece as a qualified opponent, but at this stage, if trapattoni holds such an idea to look at the Italian opponent in the final, then the gold medal coach is definitely kicked in the head by the donkey.
A team that can beat many strong teams, such as Portugal, France and Czech Republic, will never really be a weak team, no matter how weak they are. Otherwise, won’t it prove that losing to teams such as Greece, France and Czech Republic is not even as good as a weak team?
Trapattoni and Italian players will never make such mistakes, especially Fiorentina players who have just suffered a big loss at Chelsea. They should be more careful. Pirlo and Stahl specially organized a group of people to squat in their rooms every day after training and study Greek game videos repeatedly, which shows that they attach great importance to this opponent.
Look at the Greek side. After learning that the team has reached the European Cup finals historically, a large number of Greek fans flocked to the streets to celebrate this great moment spontaneously!
In the upcoming European Cup final, Greek fans said that they don’t care about the result of the game, because for them, it is something that deserves their celebration that the team can reach the final. As far as the final result is concerned, they will warmly welcome these heroes back to China!
Although Greek fans are very concerned about this, the Greek Football Association is obviously unable to sit still at this time. After all, when the championship trophy, especially the European Cup, is just in front of them, few people can resist this huge temptation. Worse, once the Greek team successfully wins the cup in the European Cup, the road to promotion will be much smoother for these football association officials in the future.
In order to stimulate the players’ fighting spirit, the Greek Football Association generously promised the players before the game that if the team finally won the Drou Cup, all the players would receive an extra huge bonus of up to 10,000 euros!
Chapter 1277 Battle Reese (1)
There’s a saying that there is a brave man who will be rewarded with money in the Greek Football Association. These players are going to try their best in the final, but the Greek players are screaming like chicken blood, and their enthusiasm for training has risen two steps in an instant. I can’t wait to have a real fight with the Italians now!
Seeing that the players are still so serious about training, they are not relaxed because they have reached the final in history, nor are they negative because their opponents are strong, and they are not interested in the championship trophy (bonus? ) full of longing, Severiano Reija Geer was very satisfied. The coach felt that this time in Greece, he might really create a miracle that was no less than that when he made a newly promoted horse in Kaiserslautern.
In this way, when the fans eagerly expected the players of both sides to prepare for the war, they slowly came to July 4, which is the final day of the European Cup!