11/21/24
June 15, 2016
SportsFilter: The Wednesday Huddle:
A place to discuss the sports stories that aren't making news, share links that aren't quite front-page material, and diagram plays on your hand. Remember to count to five Mississippi before commenting in anger.
There aren't many easy games in these kind of tournaments. The "minnows" made it through tough qualifying groups, qualifying that saw the likes of The Netherlands and Greece drop out.
So no, I'm not surprised.
posted by owlhouse at 02:32 PM on June 15, 2016
I am surprised. I thought there would be blowouts and didn't like the idea of the expanded field.
Without Iceland we would've missed Cristiano Ronaldo's pouting and Iceland defender Kari Arnason's devastating smackdown. He ended his comments by picking up Thor's hammer.
posted by rcade at 03:45 PM on June 15, 2016
Also, the big teams tend to start slow in these tournament and gel as the tournament progresses and results are required.
posted by prof at 01:02 PM on June 16, 2016
In the run up to the Euros the conventional wisdom was the tournament (or at least the group stage) would be terrible because the expansion to 24 teams meant 8 minnows who would come in and get whomped on. That's been strangely untrue through today at least. Is it just a opening day jitters or mediocre "big" teams being unable to unlock well-drilled bus parkers?