Match 12 - Austria v Poland / Dan Fitch / 11 June 2008 / Leave a comment

They say that everyone loves a plucky underdog who is willing to take on the big boys, but if that's true, then why does every right minded person hate Scrappy Doo?

Still, my aversion to Scooby's annoying nephew aside, I enjoyed watching Austria's plucky response to Croatia's early goal. True, they still lost, but they didn't receive the tonking that might have been expected.

The Austrian team have received an unprecedented amount of bad press before the tournament. From what I was hearing about Austria being the worst side to ever grace the European Championships, I expected them to be somewhere around the level of Jossey's Giants.

Instead they are what even the worst teams are in the European Championships; decidedly mediocre. This is the fatal flaw with the tournament and why it can never hold a candle to the World Cup. It might well be harder to win, but often the teams are too close in ability to be separated and even the lesser sides can generally avoid being embarrassed.

Compare this to the World Cup where sacrificial lambs from Africa and Asia are routinely served up as fodder for the giants of Europe and South America. It's fun to see five or six goals whistling past inept goalkeepers. There's also something to be said for having to wait a while before the big sides finally clash. Is there anywhere to go but downhill after the excitement of Holland v Italy?

Against Germany, the Poles were equally as plucky as the Austrians, but still came away with nothing. It must hurt to have never beaten your deadliest rivals. Poland are the Dick Dastardly to Germany's Yankee Doodle Pigeon, destined to never tear their enemy apart.

Two Hanna Barbera references in the same column really illustrates my lack of cultural education and talking of idiots, a total of 157 were arrested at the Germany and Poland clash. The best statistic that the Poles could quote from the night, was that 143 of these fans were German. Though the more cynical amongst us would say that's only because all the energetic young Polish men are too busy working on building sites in London.

In all, Austria and Poland have met seven times, with Austria winning three and Poland four. Their games have averaged a massive 4.7 goals per game, with all but one encounter breaking 2.5 goals. It's true that these statistics go back as far as a first encounter in 1935, with Austria running out 5-2 winners, but even recent encounters have led to the keepers having bad backs.

The two sides were in the same qualifying group for the World Cup in 2006, which were the last competitive games that Austria played before this tournament. Poland won 3-2 at home and 3-1 away.

All of Austria's fixtures since that qualifying campaign have been friendlies, in which footballers traditionally exert about as much physical effort as I do whilst watching them on the TV. It is shocking then that in those 24 fixtures, Austria kept a clean sheet on only 3 occasions, despite 20 of these matches being at home. Poland's forwards will be buoyed by the fact that even Liechtenstein were able to breach the Austrian defence.

Poland had their moments against Germany's far from perfect defence, the most notable being when Smolarek was wrongly adjudged to be offside and was clear through on goal. The result couldn't be argued against though and Poland's defending was lousy at times.

In all there have been two instances in the tournaments since 1996, of teams that have lost their first match, meeting each other in the second match. The statistics do not show any sign of an increase in attacking intent. Neither of these games produced over 2.5 goals.

But given the poor defences of both teams, the price of [2.62] for over 2.5 goals is well worth a punt, with unders at [1.61]. The fact that only 2 of the 8 opening matches produced over 2.5 goals has perhaps made the unders price artificially low. Have faith people. With defences like these, there have to be chances.

Tags: Euro 2008 bets, Euro 2008 betting, Smolarek