Geof said:
I mean: Kazakhstan, Azerbaïjan, Armenia?? jeez, those aren't nice places for an easy match. I'd rather have Cyprus, Malta, San Marino, Andorra,...
True, but still those teams are considerably worse than ours. Besides, we've know in that point that we're even quite used to beat these smaller nations. There are few exceptions in the fresh memory though, most notably the games against Wales and Andorra... Against bigger teams our team has a bad habit of making it close to victory and then choke, but I'm quietly confident about this changing since Hodgson replaced our last coach who was quite uncapable for the job...
Perhaps this describes our NT quite well:
http://rapidshare.de/files/10376141/4-3_Lokvenc.mpg.html
Geof said:
Poland is OK, they're not bad, but at least we didn't pick Germany/Italy.
S&M are very though, we had'em in the WC qualifiers, and .. well... we're not qualified.
And Portugal aren't the strongest of the first pot. Of course I'd have preferred Greece, but I feel we can win some points against them.
Portugal was my favourite below Greece. Figo's and Rui Costa's generation is pretty much gone, and I believe that our style fits perfectly with theirs. Not to forget that visiting the ex-USSR countries and Helsinki might prove to be very hard for the boys from the South.
I agree with venom that Poland was the best alternative from that pot.
Serbia seems like a decent opponent too, my image of them as a moody team still stays... The good thing ist that I have not forgotten an unlucky defeat at Belgrad and magnificent 3-0 in Helsinki victory last time we faced them at qualifiers.
What do I think about Belgium? Not too bad draw, five years ago we beated you 4-1, my image is that your still going through quite painful change of an era after several of your stars grew too old. Are you still playing with such conservative style? Besides TamU won Charleroi.
Geof said:
In conclusion: Portugal and Serbia favorite for the first place. Poland and Belgium won't give their ticket away for free though.
And lousy ex-USSR travels to come.
The point is that none of the four teams estimated as bigger than Finland can't afford to underestimate us at all. This group is quite a dream come true for us (only group C would have been better) after few previous, very difficult groups.
Geof said:
And what about you guys from Finland? Erkka? Venom? how's your team?
We're quite good. We've got a nice bunch of good goalkeepers, even though I've got to admit that I'd love to see Antti Niemi back from his international retirement since Bolton's Jussi Jääskeläinen hasn't been that good with our NT.
Our defence is decent. I believe that you are familiar with Anderlecht's Iron Mountain, Hannu Tihinen. Sami Hyypiä is considered as the biggest star, but he's performances with NT need to get better. Werder Bremen's Petri Pasanen is one of my favourites, very good centerback, though quite injuryprone and the last coach used him too much as a fullback. So in short summary, our centrebacks are good but our problems lie with the fullbacks.
At midfield our defensive roles are covered superbly. Tottenham's Teemu Tainio and PSV's Mika Väyrynen are fantastic guys, and Crystal Palace's Aki Riihilahti has recently been a success with national team. I don't know what are Hodgson's plans with the offensive roles, we've got the King Litmanen for that place when he's fit, but unfortunately I can't see that happening many times... Eremenko jr. who just moved to play for Saturn from Lecce has potential, but currently he thinks too much of himself.
At attack we've got Birmingham's Forssell who has been very unlucky with injuries lately. Blackburn's Kuqi will probably play quite much too, but the others behind them are quite unknown, it's hard to say who of them will step up.
Now that we've got a competent coach too, I can see us qualifying at last. Royn kanssa Eurooppaa valloitamaan!!
int:
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