David Villa scored the first hat-trick of Euro 2008 as Spain lived up to their pre-tournament billing with a fine victory over Russia in Group D.
Roman Pavlyuchenko nodded a consolation but Cesc Fabregas headed a fourth.
The best game so far in the tournament. A terrific performance from Holland. They went ahead with a typical Van Nistelrooy goal, it was offside but I think they deserved the luck as they should have had a penalty earlier.
The second and third goals came on the break – total football at it’s best.
Dreadful first half. Romania had 11 men behind the ball, France couldn’t break them down. The second half wasn’t better.
can’t really blame Romania, they had a game plan and stuck to it, however France didn’t even trouble them. At no stage did you feel Romania were under heavy pressure and I can’t remember the Romanian goalkeeper making a meaningful save.
They need to fix-up in the coming games if they are to advance from this group.
Podolski scored twice to give Germany the victory. Poland were not outclassed, and at times they were the best team, but overall Germany deserved it.
Austria didn’t turn out to be the pushovers we all thought they would and far from embarassing their country they can be proud of their performance.
As for Croatia, looks like they haven’t been able to replace Eduardo.
Portugal’s Euro 2008 campaign opened in impressive fashion with victory over Turkey in Geneva.
Pepe opened the scoring after 61 minutes, surging from defence to beat Turkey keeper Volkan Demirel after a slick exchange with Nuno Gomes.
And Raul Meireles slid home the second in injury time after a flowing move.
The Czechs take the early initiative in Group A, but Switzerland can count themselves unlucky not to have claimed at least a point.