World Cup Corner

Holland Under-21s sliced open their inept Serbian counterparts to register a 4-1 win, thus retaining the European U-21 Championship crown. Played in front of a 20,000 boisterous crowd, and watched by millions more worldwide, the Dutch have shown that they current possess the best and brightest young guns in Europe.

Maceo Rigters picked up the golden boot for Holland by scoring his fourth goal of the tournament. Sadly for 10 men Serbia, the damage had already been inflicted by Otman Bakkal and Ryan Babel.

Along with Rigters, Royston Drenthe and Ryan Babel are currently heavily linked with big summer transfer moves. Drenthe (player of the tournament) in particular has caught the eye of Newcastle’s new manager Sam Allardyce, so a move the Premiership seems inevitable.

One of the most watched teams this year was England, with several quality players such as Nigel Reo-Coker of West Ham, Steven Taylor and James Milner of Newcastle and Leroy Lita of Reading managed to keep up that old English tradition. Failing in the knockout stages to penalties. Along with the Dutch, I was expecting England to go all the way.

But the glory and prestige has stayed with the Netherlands. Who can be very proud of this young bunch of future stars. Those boys are a bit special!

As the 1980s approached big changes occurred. This time the format was changed to include eight finalists. Of these eight four groups were formed. The winner of each group then went on to the finals until an overall winner was obvious. West Germany showed up again to show the world they were serious footballers and they managed to dominate the European tournament once again by beating Belgium in the final game.
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When it comes to European nations and international football the UEFA European Football Championships is the most important. This championship occurs every four years and has been going on since 1960. Today this tournament is one of the world’s most prestigious however it has changed significantly since its beginning.
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If you are part of the football circle then you have probably heard of the word catenaccio, which means “dead-bolt” or “lock” in literal terms but it is interpreted as a very bad word referring to Italian football from the ‘60s and ‘70s that was negative at best. There are some tactical lessons to be learned from Catenaccio and any soccer coach should take these into consideration. However, Catenaccio can be a very good strategy to use for defense when it is correctly performed. In fact, the result of implementing Catenaccio may be one of the very best defensive strategies that exist in football. There is of course one good reason why Catenaccio isn’t liked by many soccer fans and that is as simple as the strategy keeps the other team from scoring.
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