VilaWeb - Diari escola: Euro 2008

VilaWeb.cat

VilaWeb.tv

Nosaltres.cat

MÉSVilaWeb

Correu

Clau

diumenge, 2 de març de 2025

> Who Will Win?

> Winners

> 7 June: Day of Catalan Selections

dimarts, 3 de juny de 2008

This Saturday, 7 June, sees the start of Euro 2008, European football's most important championship. Contrary to what normally happens with the tournament (which is held every four years) this year's event is organised by two countries, Austria and Switzerland, rather than just one.

Euro 2008 will be played in eight cities, four of which are in Austria (Innsbruck, Klagenfurt, Salzburg and Vienna) and four in Switzerland (Basel, Berne, Geneva and Zurich). Sixteen teams will take part, the fourteen that came through the qualifying rounds plus Austria and Switzerland, which qualify automatically as host countries.

The teams are split into four groups comprising four teams. Group A is made up of Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Portugal and Turkey; Group B comprises Austria, Croatia, Germany and Poland; Group C consists of the Netherlands, Italy, Romania and France; and Group D is made up of Greece, Sweden, Spain and Russia.

The best two teams from each group go through to the quarter-finals, which will decide the semi-finalists, two of which will dispute the final on 29 June at the Ernst Happel Stadium in the Austrian capital, Vienna.

Only one leading side failed to reach Euro 2008: England. The team's absence contrasts with the fact that two English clubs, Manchester United and Chelsea, reached the final of the Champions League this year.

+ Webs relacionades dins Nosaltres.Cat: Futbol.
+ Euro 2008: al portal futbolístic ESPNsoccernet.

Who Will Win?

+ Portugal is captained by Cristiano Ronaldo.

Looking at what has happened in the past, as well as the current situation, we could say that the teams with the highest chance of winning Euro 2008 are Germany (always a tough competitor, with or without its star players), Portugal (captained by Cristiano Ronaldo, the leading player in European football), Italy (current world champions and the leading exponent of practical football), France (a World Cup runner-up), Spain (like France, comprised of top players), and the Netherlands (traditionally exponents of the most refined kind of football). But it would be advisable not to rule out any of the teams. If we look back four years, nobody considered the winners that year, Greece, as favourites.

Winners

+ Germany has won three European Cup competitions.

Twelve European Cup competitions have been played since the first one in 1960. Germany has won three times (1972, 1980 and 1996), France twice (1984 and 2000) and Italy only once (despite winning four World Cups, one fewer than Brazil, which leads the table of winners). Other countries to have won the European Cup include two that no longer exist, the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia, Spain, the Netherlands, Denmark and Greece.

7 June: Day of Catalan Selections

+ 3rd Day of Catalan Selections will take place the same day Euro 2008 kicks off.

On 7 June, the same day Euro 2008 kicks off, the 3rd Day of Catalan Selections will take place. Organised by Plataforma ProSeleccions Esportives Catalanes, which aims to claim the right for Catalonia to compete internationally. The event, light-hearted but with a tone of claim, will take place in the context of recent news that the government of Catalonia (the Generalitat) is promoting the setting up of an international sporting competition that is recognised by UEFA, European football's governing body. The competition, to possibly take place next year, would involve nation states as well as stateless nations.

MATERIALS

Euro 2008
Format:Web
Pàgina oficial de l'Eurocopa, en una desena de llengües.
Euro 2008
Format:Web
Especial de la BBC, amb una relació detallada de les possibilitats de cadascuna de les setze seleccions participants.
Plataforma ProSeleccions Esportives Catalanes
Format:Web
Instituïda el 1998 amb el propòsit d'aconseguir el reconeixement internacional de les seleccions esportives de Catalunya.
Dia de les Seleccions Catalanes
Format:Web
Preparat per la Plataforma ProSeleccions Esportives Catalanes. A Girona, el 7 de juny.

QUE HO SABIES?

Out of the fifty teams that played in the qualifying rounds of Euro 2008, four were stateless territories: Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Faroe Islands.
Germany has participated nine times (this will be its tenth) in the European Cup, more than any other country.
The former England and FC Barcelona forward Gary Lineker defined football as a game played by two teams of eleven players won by Germany.