my highest achievement: ranked 338 on Uefa.com

Game 2 Matches wrap-up!
IF it's too long, just scroll all the way down to the end for the tl;dr comment :)


Group A, or AKA The Group with the hardest names to pronounce, or The Group with the most yellow and red card holders.

Poland tied 1-1 to Russia

The game took place on June 12 in Warsaw, Poland, which coincidentally, was also Russia Day, the national holiday of the Russian Federation. The game itself wasn't all that interesting, but what happened outside, on the streets of Warsaw, was. Many Russian fans paraded through Warsaw, carrying Russian flags and chanting the national anthem of Russia. Now, the Polish fans were none too pleased, for obvious reasons: Poland used to be under the Russian rule for more than many years, until their independence in 1918.
Fun fact: Russia was sanctioned by the Uefa last week after their fans misbehaved during, and after, their game against the Czech Republic.


Greece 1-2 Czech

Both teams understood that they had to win this game if they even want to be able to have a chance to move on. Greece tied their opener against Poland and Czech lost 4 goals against Russia, so ya, needless to say, both teams did what they could to win. Sadly, Greece wasn't able to score what was needed to win. So Czech managed to walk away from this game with a 3 point lead over Greece.

 
Group B, or AKA the Death Group

Netherlands 1-2 Germany

 (just wanted to add this photo because Ozil, #8, is in it :) )

Germany, one of my favourite teams, won the game, obviously. The German scorer? Mario Gomez of course (the commentator was hilarious: Gomez is on fi-ahhhhhhhh. Right.). The Dutch scorer? Robin van Persie, who finally remembered where he put his scoring boots, was able to put one in the net for the Dutch side. Compared to both of their first game of the tourney, this was a much better one. There was constant action, scoring on target, and even 3 made it in -and finally one for the Dutch side, and lots of...taking off kits and walking around shirtless.

 

(um, I don't really know how I feel about Sneijder's tattoos...)

Denmark 2-3 Portugal

Brilliant game. Denmark fought hard and Bendtner (pictured above) scored twice, even if one of them was an offside shot, and Portugal scored 3 times but none of which was from Christiano Ronaldo. So yes, Christiano Ronaldo's frown is still intact.
 Fun fact: the Danish Crown Prince was in the VIP section, watching the game live.


Group C, or AKA the Group that David Silva and Xavi and the Irish team play in

Italy 1-1 Croatia

The only thing that I can say about this game is that the guy with the fancy hairstyle (I swear he has a stylist who sprays an insane amount of hairspray into his hair before each 45 minutes because ....at the end of the 45 minutes, his hair still has a certain bounce to it) scored a wicked direct free-kick.

Spain 4-1 Ireland

I watched this game with two of my friends and we were playing board games throughout the entire 90 minutes, so I missed all four goals, but that's quite alright. Seriously. Torres, Silva, and Fabregas all scored, and in that order too (well, Torres scored twice: he scored again after Silva's goal). I'm glad that Torres finally managed to score again at an international level after so long of not being able to, and Silva's and Fabregas's goals were simply something amazing. Definitely worth a rewatch, or three. I was happy that Spain won the game but I was also sad to see Ireland lose. And plenty of kudos to the Irish keeper, Shay Given, because he defended very well against the Spanish team. Had it been any other keeper, Spain might have scored more than just four goals that night.


Group D, or AKA,  the last group (really, I have no creative name for this group...)

Ukraine 0-2 France

This game was a massive mess. It was pouring heavily and thundering really hard. The kick-off was at 10am my time, but 5 minutes into the game, the ref announced that it was raining much too heavily for the players to continue. So he postponed the game for 55 minutes, forcing me to watch some horrendously boring US Open 'action.'  Ultimately, after all the wait, France won the game. Ukraine fought hard, really hard, and I applaud them for their efforts, but in the end, it was gonna be a French game.

England 3-2 Sweden

Best game of all Game 2's matches. It was such a thrill to watch, throughout the entire 90 minutes. England had a steady lead throughout the entire game, starting with Andy Carroll's powerful header during the second half. Then Sweden caught up with a goal of their own, which followed with a second, putting them in the lead. Then England caught up with their second goal and in the last 15 minutes, Danny Welbeck managed to bury in a third goal, securing England a win, and 3 points, over Sweden, making them the leader, and Sweden the absolute bottom, of Group D.



TL;DR?
Walk away knowing that: Portugal's Christiano Ronaldo's frown is still intact, Dutch player Robin van Persie can finally score again, Germany's Mario Gomez is on fire (having scored three goals so far), Spain's Fernando Torres can finally put the football into the back of the net, France is finally doing much better under their new manager and that England's finally found a keeper, Joe Hart, who can actually hold onto the football and not let it roll out from under him (hi Green), Greece is still on a one-team mission to attain the most yellows of the tournament, Italy's Andrea Pirlo (fancy hair dude) becomes the second Italian to score from a direct free kick, and that Croatia's the tallest team in the entire tournament. 


And I leave you with my accomplishment from Uefa.com's Predictor's game, you know the game where I've been studiously attempting to correctly predict different game results:

(ya, June 16th, I didn't do so hot hahaha)