Euro 2012 - Official Discussion Thread

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Great game.
We kept the ball possession like Spain or Barça,with more than 60%. England just thought about defending,and when Carroll came in their only strategy was the long ball,hoping that Rooney would invent something afterwards.

Pirlo's penalty was pure magic.
And now,a team against which we never lost in an official competition...

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Beating Germany feels so,so sweet
Especially after an amazingly good performance,with loads of wasted chances and a dubious german penalty.
But who cares,NEVER BEATEN IN AN OFFICIAL COMPETITION!!!

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I would like to see Italy vs. Uruguay in the Confederations Cup. We already defeated them in Rome without Forlán, Suárez and Cavani.

Oh well,it was a friendly.
Even Germany can beat us in friendlies

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England is the biggest lie in football history.

Uruguay vs. Italy = Catenaccio vs. Catenaccio

Italy in this Euro2012 is doing something very different from the catenaccio though.

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I was 12 and it's the first international tournament I remember. I was in Italy during that classic Semi final. The celebrations in Sorrento were insane. Then we traveled to Florence and Italy lost the Final. Six years later, I was in Sorrento when Italy won the World Cup. In 2010, I watched the games from Naples but never went to Sorrento for a match. Notice a pattern?

I'm crazy enough to hop on a plane to watch the Final over there but I don't think it's going to work. The flight times aren't great and the prices are through the roof.

You must. Do this for your country !

As for me, I was only 7, so you can imagine my remembrances of the match aren't very precise, but yeah, it was such an incredible shock that the emotion remains. But I remember all the following championships with growing precision. I didn't really care about 2002 after both France and Italy failed miserably. For some reason I was rooting for Greece in the final stages of 2004, though at the time I hadn't fully realized how much their win was an exploit.

2006 is the first I recall with precision. I was in Germany for a school trip during the early stages, I was in Savoie for the eights/quarters/semis and... on a plane for the finale ! I was traveling to Melito Porto Salvo (my father's home town in Calabria). I watched the beginning of the match in the airport, but was in the plane during the whole end, and I only learnt the results at the end of the flight when a passenger was able to switch his phone off. We were all euphoric.

I don't care how much it would cost,but if Italy were playing a WC final then I would never,ever get on a plane

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Spain played at their best and deserved to win.
We were exhausted after a great tournament...Chiellini started even though he was injured (Prandelli's error number 1),Abate and Balzaretti weren't at their best,Thiago Motta is the most phisically unreliable man on Earth (Prandelli's error number 2)...

Spain managed to completely block Pirlo out of the match,and we didn't find many alternatives. And when we did,Di Natale wasted them as usual.
I think the main problem was trying to play like Spain against Spain. You can do that against the English and the Germans,and we did it very well,but playing against Spain is like playing against Barça: you can't beat them at their game,you need to win by finding some other way.

The last two goals were just for the stats,it was 11 vs 9 basically.