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Give or take a nickel or two, that was the price we soccer junkies paid when the UEFA European Championship was conducted four years ago in Portugal. Not to go see a match in Lisbon, but to watch the tournament on television via pay-per-view. ESPN rescued us from that tyranny by securing the rights to the entire event — being staged concurrently in Switzerland and Austria — and placing the matches on its family of networks. In exchange for this, ESPN ought to be forgiven for “Dream Job” and “Madden Nation.”
All the rest of what you’ll need to know (most of it, anyway) in order to follow what some incongruously refer to as “Europe’s World Cup” is contained right here:
Five essential facts
5. This is the biggest international tournament outside the World Cup. Some purists claim this event is better because there aren’t any weakling entrants from Asia or North America. There are 16 squads drawn into four groups, with the top two from each advancing to the quarterfinals. And because these teams keep stepping on each other in qualifying for this tournament and the World Cup, there is a greater intensity throughout this event than in some early World Cup games.
4. England’s not coming. Because of some bureaucratic bungling at England’s Football Association that led to incompetent Steve McClaren being selected as manager, which led to David Beckham being prematurely dropped from the squad, which led to an embarrassing nil-nil tie with Macedonia, England fell one point short of qualifying.
That failure removed one of the most passionately followed teams from Euro 2008, as well as the star-power attached to Beckham, John Terry and Steven Gerrard. But there’s still plenty worth watching.
3. Greece is your defending champion. That’s easy to forget. Greece is not among the first names most would mention when pondering the list of European soccer powers, but the Greeks won with defense, chemistry and a sense of opportunism at Euro 2004. It’s doubtful they’ll be able to replicate that magic, but their success gives hope to a capable team such as Croatia.

sportingnews.com

Tags: 2008, euro, watch