Scouting Euro 2012

[Harry]

I have heard they are only likely to use him from the bench. Shows the strength in depth the Germans have in attacking areas.

Yes, Gotze will be an excellent player, but I don't think we'll see much of him due to the embarassment of riches in the German midfield.

Anyway - now that I'm back from a good day's golfing (bit windy though!), lets have a look at tonight's fixtures. Holland v Denmark and Germany v Portugal.

A number of the players I've mentioned earlier on the thread probably won't all start tonight, but if they do come off the bench I hope we can get a good look at them.

So, today's players to look out for :

Holland :

Jetro Willems - 18 year old left back from PSV Eindhoven.

Luciano Narsingh - 21 year old striker from Heerenveen who had a great season qualifying for Europa League.

Kevin Strootman - 22 year old creative midfielder from PSV.

All of these guys probably won't start unfortunately. So I suppose, aside from the household names we all know, look out for Ibrahim Affelay. Van Der Wiel at right back may be interesting a few Premier League clubs too.

Denmark :

Some potential Championship players here in the form of :

Stephan Andersen - Evian - 30 year old keeper - could cost as little as £250k.

Tobias Mikkelsen - Nordsjaelland - 25 years old right winger.

Nicklas Pedersen - Groningen - 24 year old striker, 6ft 2. Might cost at least £1m though?

Also look out for :

Jores Okore - Nordsjaelland - 19 year old centre-half - watch out for this lad, he's a monster - only 6ft, but a monster!

Christian Eriksen - 20 year old attacking midfielder from Ajax. You may already be aware of his talents.

Daniel Wass - 23 years old marauding right back from Benfica.

Germany :

Mario Gotze - 19 year old attacking midfielder from Borussia Dortmund.

Marco Reus - 24 year old winger/striker from Moenchengladbach. On his way to Dortmund.

Again, both of these probably won't start but I hope we do get a look.

Portugal :

Nelson Oliviera - 20 year old striker from Benfica.

Postiga will probably start ahead of this lad, but gawd knows why.

Aside from the household names here, also look out for Joao Pereira at right back, and they've also finally got a new keeper in Rui Patricio who looks good.

There we go. I predict another excellent evening of football.

[internetjef]

Very surprised dutch have gone for this rookie left back. Ive never heard of him, not even on footy manager

Also very surprised to see Afellay get a starting birth considering wealth of attacking options dutch have.

Looking forward tio see if Eriksen can justify the hype

[Harry]

So, Day 2 is now done, with the first surprise being caused by the Danes seeing off the wasteful Dutch. The Germans, as usual, managed to grind out a victory.

Who impressed us tonight then? I mentioned to look out for Willems and Affelay for the Dutch and neither of them disappointed. I thought Willems showed incredible maturity for a lad who's only just turned 18. Comfortable and composed on the ball, defended well and got forward plenty too. Very good display. Affelay showed up well and I was impressed by him.

I also mentioned Van Der Wiel who I thought had a rather poor game at right back. Very slow on the ball, never increased the tempo, didn't do anything overlapping or getting forward at all and was rightly subbed. Apparently Chelsea are looking at him but they may want a 2nd opinion after this performance. Disappointing.

As for the rest of them, Robben was as frustrating as ever, Van Persie looks like he is feeling the pressure of Huntelaar on his heels, Sneijder was class as ever and was there really any need for Van Bommel and De Jong doing the same job?

Onto the Danes, well, Eriksen was supposed to be the one to watch but he also was very disappointing. Took a long time to even get into the game and when he did was ineffectual. Definitely did not live up to the hype. Lasse Schone came on and did more in 15 minutes than Eriksen did in 75.

Andersen in goal looked good and was very comfortable with the ball at his feet (aside from one near fatal pass to the opposition!). He may be one City could be looking at, he's played in England before and is currently at a mid-table French team Evian.

Glad we got to see an all too brief glimpse of Tobias Mikkelsen, who showed some good skills and intent. An unlikley target but worth an ask maybe? He may well stay at Nordsjaelland though as they've won the league so he'll have Champions League footy next year.

I thought Agger and Kjaer were solid at the back. Kjaer has been under pressure after struggling for both Wolfsburg and Roma and was by no means a starter and I for one was surprised to see him start ahead of Bjelland, but he proved his worth. Zimling was all action in the middle and a special mention for Krohn-Dehli who grabbed the goal and had an all round eye-catching game. Simon Poulsen also had a good game at left-back.

The Germans didn't really impress. Unfortunately we didn't get to see the likes of Gotze, Reus or Schurrle. But Ozil had the stand-out performance. Khadira also played very well, but the Bayern contingent were not up to their usual scratch - Muller, Lahm, Badstuber, Schweinsteiger, Boateng, Gomez (aside from his goal) were all rather average.

Portugal were cagey until they went behind. I noted to look out for Pereira at right back who was tenacious, solid and used the ball well. Patricio didn't have a hell of a lot to do in the sticks and I'm glad we saw Nelson Oliveira come on for Postiga and show a couple of good touches. He has to start in place of Postiga next time out, surely!!

Players of the day : Krohn-Dehli, Agger, Kjaer & Ozil.

Chumps of the day :

Van Persie - should have bagged a couple.

Robben - Hugely wasteful, enormously selfish.

Van Marwijk for playing two DM's against what was always going to be a defensive Danish team.

The BBC for continually pressing Hodgson on the Ferdinand debate - We're all N.F.I. now to be honest! (Not ******g Interested).

Until tomorrow.......

[internetjef]

Have to disagree with you on the young left back Willens there Harry. Although I appreciate he is very young I though he got caught out of position quite a few times, and on more than one occasion took a verbal bashing from sneijder. didn't embarrass himself or anything but wouldn't stretch to saying he played well. Same for affelay who apart from a couple of nice dribbles looked pretty ineffectual.

Sneijder was on top form but strikers let him down. Will be tough for the manager as although a very dissapointing result he would argue they actually should have won by 3-4 if taking their chances. Credit to Danes who kept the ball well in possession (especially in latter stages).

I expect one of the main pluses for Germans will be the clean sheet. With the attacking options they have loew will be confident of scoring. But aside from a few shaky moments at the end the back four held together pretty well. I agree that oliviera did more in his 20 minute cameo than postiga did in the entire match. They surely have to start him next game if for no other reason he can hold the ball up. Do they still have Hugo almeida as an option also?

Looking forward to seeing Spain v Italy today. It seems that no one really knows exactly what formation / players Italy are going to with (possibly even the manager ). I do fear for them a bit as bar a few players they don't seem to have the world class names associated with previous squads.

Interesting to see James McLean appears to be being heralded as the Irish pele which seems a bit much!?! Especially as talk is he will start on the bench. Saying that if your first team centre mid pairing is Keith Andrews and glen whelan then bas savage would look like pele ha ha

Enjoy the games! Spain to beat Italy for me and to tight to call in the other. Maybe a narrow Croatia win if you push me

[chipdawg]

Denmark played exactly the way England have to play; solid defence, good ball retention and then swift movement in midfield when they try and break. Of course England will be attempting ill-concieved 50 yard passes left, right and centre but we can dream....

[Harry]

Have to disagree with you on the young left back Willens there Harry. Although I appreciate he is very young I though he got caught out of position quite a few times, and on more than one occasion took a verbal bashing from sneijder. didn't embarrass himself or anything but wouldn't stretch to saying he played well. Same for affelay who apart from a couple of nice dribbles looked pretty ineffectual.

I agree that oliviera did more in his 20 minute cameo than postiga did in the entire match. They surely have to start him next game if for no other reason he can hold the ball up. Do they still have Hugo almeida as an option also?

Interesting to see James McLean appears to be being heralded as the Irish pele which seems a bit much!?!

Yeah, fair comment on Willems jef. He did get caught out a couple of times, but considering he's only had 30 odd games as a pro and 3 caps I thought he did well. Certainly there's a lot more to see of this kid and he'll be around for a long time.

Yes, the Portuguese do have Almeida as an option. A good couple of seasons at Bremen and Besiktas, but I'd much rather see more of Oliveira.

As for McLean - the next Pele? Whoever it was heralding this, I assume it was one of those irish jokes, yeah? He'll be a decent player but he's certainly not a Pele - he won't even be a John Barnes.

Ok, onto tonight's fayre.

Spain v Italy first up. Not many players I can pick out here who everyone won't already be aware of. I'd like to see Angelo Ogbonna for the Italians, and Javi Martinez for the Spanish. Should be a good match though - can the Italians overcome the scandal and show us all they can play. Is this a tournament too far for the Spanish?

As for Eire v Croatia hopefully we'll get a look at Jorica Buljat the big centre half from Maccabi. I'd also like to see Sime Vrsaljko, a 20 year old pacy right back from Dinamo Zagreb and particularly Milan Badelj the young Zagreb playmaker.

[Harry]

Well, unfortunately we didn't get to see any of the young players I had noted earlier this evening, although probably not surprisingly.

Still, we did get to see some good quality on show from the more established names.

I thought the Italians gave Spain a good game and had a real good go at them, which was very pleasing to see. It's all to easy to defend for your lives against the Spanish, but Italy showed you could maintain solidity but offer a lot going forward as well.

Balotelli should have put them ahead when clean through and Italy could easily have been ahead before their goal having created the better chances throughout the 1st half. Di Natale took his goal well following a sublime piece of play from Pirlo.

Spain didn't quite seem to be themselves, maybe it was the formation? They certainly didn't seem to keep possession as well as they usually do and there were only brief moments of ticky-tacky rather than the whole game! They tried a lot more longer balls and cross-field diagonals than they usually do. They just seemed a lot more congested in midfield with the 3 supposed front men (Fabregas, Silva & Iniesta - assuming they were actually meant to be a fluid 4-3-3) playing far too deep and it did almost end up looking like 6 in the middle - which I'm sure wasn't the intention.

Once Navas and Torres came on they looked more natural and more dangerous. Torres of course should have scored a couple, but we can say that in every game can't we, ha ha. Although Inesta was excellent throughout, I thought that once they switched the formation, both Inesta and Xavi were free to play their normal game, rather than this ridiculous midfield set-up they had to contend with.

A word for Daniele De Rossi. Not usually a centre-back but he played the Libero role excellently. In fact, better than I've ever seen him play in centre-mid!

Onto the Irish against the Croats. In all fairness, blood and thunder, guts and glory will get you a long way, but you do need to back it up with some semblance of ability as well, and I'm afraid to say the Irish found themselves years behind their opponents in terms of technical ability.

Croatia impressed with Modric, Perisic, Mandzukic, Rakitic, Jelavic & Srna all playing at a level way above any of the Irish could muster. Mandzukic in particular caught my eye with a performance that included everything you would want is your big target man type striker - held the ball up, won things in the air, covered every blade of grass, scored 2 goals and generally gave the centre-halves a torrid time.

Fair play to Ireland for getting their goal and giving it a good go, but they're not in the same league as all of the other nations here.

Players of the day : De Rossi, Iniesta & Mandzukic.

Mugs of the day : Balotelli & Torres.