Diary / Jonathan Wilson / 17 June 2008 / Leave a comment

There may be no day and no night for Jonathan Wilson but a date with destiny is dawning in the group of death.

So, decision day in the group of death. Everything looks much the same - the drizzle still falls relentlessly from leaden skies, the bedraggled Dutch still bounce around the centre of Bern, and the white asparagus is still on special in the local supermarket - but by the end of today at least one, if not both, of the World Cup finalists will be eliminated.

"That's a shame," said the former France defender Marcel Desailly, who was speaking as a Castrol ambassador in Zurich yesterday. "But at the same time the Dutch and Romanians have played well and have quality. My opinion is that France have not started well and when you do that you don't get the confidence that will bring you to your real level. They are having a problem because we don't have a playmaker who is making the difference.

"This is a shame and but I still have confidence in Henry and Ribery and Malouda. This French team has the quality. It's the same team as in 2006. It's just we are missing the link between defensive midfield and the offensive players. We don't know our position."

The problem may be that it is too similar to the team of 2006; age is catching up with this French side, and the transition to a highly-talented younger generation looks to have been mismanaged. Then again, it is easy to read too much into the first couple of games of
tournaments: so long as a side gets through the group, they are only three games from glory.

That was a point Marco van Basten was keen to stress in Lausanne.
"It's nice people are praising our good football," he said. "It gives you a lot of confidence - confidence is very important for all players, but it does not really matter what the crowd or the press say. At the moment everybody is very positive and everything is wonderful, but we all know between us that there are some things to improve. That's what we're talking about and working on." Not requiring Edwin van der Sar to make three great saves per game, presumably, would be a start.

Both Van Basten and Ruud van Nistelrooy were keen yesterday to reject any suggestion that they might lie down for Romania and engineer a defeat [2.4] that would put out France and Italy. Both spoke of "momentum" - and in that regard Portugal [6.2 for the tournament] may come to regret their defeat to Switzerland in the final group game.

Whereas Germany [7.2] go into their quarter-final against Luiz Felipe Scolari's side on a high after beating Austria, Portugal [2.6 to win the quarter; Germany are 3.2] must refocus.

For journalists, achieving any kind of focus is becoming increasingly difficult. The distinction between night and day seems to have broken down: there are merely times when I'm awake and times when I'm asleep, and life goes on around them, sometimes in Innsbruck, sometimes in Bern and sometimes, as yesterday, in what feels like Zurich and Lausanne simultaneously. (Many thanks to Steve Tongue from the Independent, who kindly woke me up when the train arrived back in Bern yesterday afternoon).

It doesn't help when the permutations for who will qualify from Group C are so complex. I watched the Germany v Austria game with four other journalists in an Italian restaurant in Bern, and the meal was punctuated by a series of phone calls from our desks confirming we had stated the situation correctly. These mini-groups are doing nobody any favours.

You do wonder what's wrong with good old-fashioned goal-difference. I see the point in the qualifiers, when positions shouldn't really be determined by whether you stuck four or eight past San Marino, but in the finals, there are no such whipping boys. Quite apart from anything else, the present head-to-head system diminishes drama: as a direct result of it, we went into the final group games with the winners of each group already decided. If goal-difference were the determining factor, both Portugal, Croatia and Spain would all have needed at least a point from their final match to be sure of remaining top. And that, surely, is preferable.

Tags: Euro 2008, Florent Malouda, France, Franck Ribery, Holland, Italy, Marco Van Basten, Romania, Rudd Van Nistelrooy, Thierry Henry