Draws for Euro ‘08, Live on ESPN2

By: Laurie | December 1st, 2007

The draw for Euro ‘08 will be on ESPN2 and ESPN Deportes tomorrow, Sunday, at 6:00 a.m. Eastern. Which is, yes, 3:00 a.m. Pacific. My time. I have very mixed emotions about this.

On the one hand, woohoo! ESPN considers a soccer event worthy of broadcasting live. And it doesn’t involve guys on the field playing the game. Slowly but surely, we are arriving. Especially since I’m sure that they could have found an actual sport to broadcast at that time. Like…oh…poker. Or…pool. Or billiards. Or snooker.

(Did I sound authoritative there? Like I knew what snooker actually is?)

It is at times like this, though, when I feel my age. Because 3:00 a.m.? Forget it. Despite my desperate need to know the Euro draw, I am either too old or too young to watch it live.

I could probably talk one of my kids into staying up to watch it for me. Or maybe I could talk my mom into getting up. She’s at that early riser stage of life.

But I digress.

Very funny thing about this draw. The seeds are based on how the teams did in the combination of World Cup ‘06 qualification and Euro ‘08 qualification. No consideration given to how the teams did when they got to World Cup. And then you have the automatic qualification, in the top pot, of a) the hosts Switzerland and Austria, and b) the ‘04 champions, Greece.

You know. The powerhouses.

And then you stick in Netherlands, who by some odd mathematical formula finished at the top and is the fourth team in the top pot. Then you get all the teams in the middle, who are in the second two pots. And last you get teams like my beloved France national team, which performs well only when its back is against the wall and thus didn’t do so well in qualifications for either competition. So France ended up in the bottom pot despite being a World Cup finalist.

Sigh.

So what does this mean? What could one of the groups look like? How about a group o’ death that includes France, Italy, Germany and Netherlands?

Excellent. Let’s have all the best teams knock each other out in the group stages. Because we don’t want too much competition in the final. Because…

Well, I don’t know. But there has to be a reason that they did it this way. Right? It couldn’t be pure stupidity on the part of the organizers.

I’ll report back on the draw tomorrow morning. At a decent hour.

Here are the groupings:

Pot 1:
Switzerland
Austria
Greece
Netherlands

Pot 2:
Croatia
Italy
Czech Republic
Sweden

Pot 3:
Romania
Germany
Portugal
Spain

Pot 4:
Poland
France
Turkey
Russia

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Category: Europe, World Football

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Bob

I think it's the right way to improve. The 'Three Lions' are in bad shape and that's the way I make me feel thanks to the Formula 1 boss McLaren. It's obvious that money is a tremendous paper in our society but without the silence of the dead, we could not sing as well as Freddy Mercury. Finally, I thank all my fans because they deserve a love from my part and of course I answer them yes either of clear.
chris

Domenech rigged this to get Italy and thus more face time for his ugly ass, second-place finishing mug.

As sick as I am of playing France, it'll be nice to make them bridesmaids once again.
Sprinter

"No consideration given to how the teams did when they got to World Cup."

Probably because not all the countries that played in qualifying.... qualified? So it would be cumbersome compare World Cup records that simply do not exist for half the countries in this tournament?

PS. I was filled with glee when Italy got France.... again!
Ian

I think the host seed is an issue ... the hosts getting a free bid, that I understand and agree with, but not a top seed. Same with the defending champ. They should be in the tournament (as it should be in the World Cup as well), but I don't see why all teams that make the tournament shouldn't be seeded according to their results. I still say that any international competition should just go by FIFA World Rankings, for consistency.
Sam

Oh man. That group of death.
Jan

Seeding the host isn't a problem in my opinion. It's obviously problematic if you got two of them. I don't see the point in seeding the title holder though.
Tom

Indeed, I think it's about time we stopped automatically seeding hosts. Particularly when there's two of them, and neither of them are particularly good.