Sadly, I missed the opening ceremony although I'm certain it contained plenty of papier mache heads, little girls twirling ribbons and an impressive display of street furniture throwing by the massed racists of eastern Europe. It must surely have been thrown into the shadows though by the fare available on the field, as both matches produced plenty of excitement and entertaining football.
First up was one of the host nation teams fighting out the inevitable opening game draw in some style, aided by the lunatic decisions of the Spanish referee. With a vociferous crowd under a closed roof, you could almost taste the atmosphere wherever you were watching the game and Poland responded as you'd expect putting a pedestrian Greece side under early pressure, and it was no surprise when Lewandowski put the home side ahead in the 17th minute when Chalkias flapped at an excellent cross from Blaszczykowski. Indeed the Poles could have already have been ahead from a similar move just minutes earlier. Poland wasted several other half-chances but the main talking point of the first half was, first a booking for Papastathopoulos for quite fairly heading the ball in a tussle with a Polish forward and later a second yellow and a red for an innocuous tackle on Murawski.
Quite what Spanish referee Carlos Velasco Carballo saw is difficult to imagine but if he books and sends players off like this all the time then we can only assume that most Spanish games end up with just the two goal-keepers on the field like a gigantic version of blow football.
The feeling at half-time was that the Greeks had offered too little and, down to ten men, the game was there for the taking by Poland but, surprisingly, exactly the opposite occurred. Greece emerged fired up and took the game to the home side eventually drawing level mainly thanks to another goal-keeping error, this time by Arsenal man Szczesny who misjudged Vassilis Torosidis' right-wing cross , allowing substitute Salpigidis to hit home from just inside the penalty area.
It was no more than Greece deserved, but they could have turned the game inside out after 70 minutes when Szczesny stuck out a leg to trip Salpigidis in the penalty area after the substitute neatly avoided the off-side to find himself clean through. With the Greeks rather bizarrely celebrating the winning of a penalty, Szczesny was sent off and PSV Eindhoven goalkeeper Tyton came off the bench to replace Maciej Rybus and promptly saved the Karagounis spot kick with his first touch.
The game ended 1-1 with both teams looking to win it and probably, in an odd way, both grateful for the point.
Later, Russia poured on the attacking football in a demolition of the Czech Republic that could have been much more embarrassing had Kerzhakov not been wearing someone else's boots; at least that's the only explanation I can think of for a host of chances that were sliced, mis-hit or mis-directed by the Russian forward. As it was we were treated to an excellent performance from young Alan Dzagoev, who at 21, scored two goals, apparently the second youngest player to do so since an 18-year-old Wayne Rooney did it. Dzagoev's performance underpinned by another two goals, one a superb solo effort from substitute Pavlyuchenko late in the game and the other from Sirokov after 24 minutes, a goal that followed on from Dzagoev' opener nine minutes earlier, reflected the performance of the Russian team although Pilar's 52nd minute goal to make the score 2-1 had seemed to make the match closer than it actually was for a time.
So two excellent games to open and a poser for Soccernet's fraternity. A Russian called Alan? Can someone please explain!
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