It happens every now and then that one team appears out of the dark and ends up winning a strong international cup or, if not, achieving an amazing performance. It used to happen more with clubs than with national teams. Forget about it. The Euro 2008, amazing and electrifying as very few international competition in the last years has kicked away almost every law of football, with the strong apparition of two very small but strong teams -Turkey and Russia- in its semifinals and with a big one -Spain- that finally broke its own curse of the quarterfinals. Germany, the other survivor of the past hear-taking days of football in Europe, is the only team that is playing its cards with the weight of the name: the Germans are, as said in previous notes, a team that can stand strong criticism with no further problem and, even better, get to the decisive stages of a cup without playing more than one proper game. With the semifinal set and about to start, it's a good time to look back to the previous round to have a clear preview of what might happen in the next days.

With a big part of the Euro almost gone, and the most exciting one still to come, the strengths and weaknesses of the different teams have led to amazing matches with extremely exciting resolutions. Sudden definitions have taught the writer it’s not good to go but a Coke when a match seems defined, as you might come back home to find the result is suddenly upside down. The candidates have been defined but many matches are still to be played and with the end of the first round, there’s still plenty to discover. Still, the obvious is the obvious and some teams have shown and amazing strength and are already thinking about how it would be to win the Euro this time.

The beginning of the always promising EURO has shown matches of very different kinds, but mainly, some very good matches and some others that were not up to the expectations. With only Greece against Sweden left to play, each team has shown its profile, and some have proved they can be really considered candidates for this edition.