Euro 2012 Diary: Dutch down but not out

I touched down in Kiev on Tuesday afternoon and was immediately struck with how warm and hospitable the city is. From the volunteer schoolchildren working at the airport offering information on everything that Kiev has to offer (not just where the Euro 2012 fan park is) to the immigration officer who I assumed knew no English yet upon studying my passport looked up at me and said 'nice beard', I've been well and truly welcomed in great style.

Tuesday night was spent exploring the hostelries and enjoying the local cuisine (strips of salt and garlic pig fat seems a speciality) while watching an intriguing game between arch rivals Poland and Russia, a game that was bitty in places but nonetheless enjoyable. It was pretty hard to ascertain which team the locals in our bar were rooting for, but everyone certainly whooped and hollered at Jakub Blaszczykowski's equaliser with great fervour when it flew into the back of the net. Some parts of football will always be universal.

Yesterday I ventured to Kiev's official Euro 2012 fan park just in time for Denmark 2-3 Portugal. I always end up feeling slightly ambivalent about the existence of these designated areas for people to watch games. When you first enter you feel like you've just crossed over into official UEFA territory, like some sort of embassy in which the laws of the host country no longer apply. It's odd. Of course there's also the fact that you can only consume officially endorsed 'partner' food and drink to contend with. Something that sticks in my craw in a place like Kiev because the local food and beer is so good that it seems a shame to only be able to drink Carlsberg rather than a great, locally brewed ale.

Aside from that, the atmosphere in Kiev's fan park is great. I counted over ten different nations represented in the smallish area in which I was sitting, all enjoying the Beautiful Game for its own sake. And what a game we were treated to, probably the best of the tournament so far as Cristiano Ronaldo's profligacy was spared by Silvestre Varela's airshot-cum-control prefaced winner that sealed the win for the Portuguese. Every event in the game was greeted with enthusiastic cheering and gesticulating in the fan park as the locals gravitated to it in greater and greater numbers, as the night wore on.

Later last night, Holland were turned over by Germany in a result that will have been tough to take for the Dutch. The rivalry between the two nations is famously fierce, and Holland have a real uphill struggle to qualify from their group now. That said, they just need to beat Portugal by a couple, a team that have looked vulnerable in their two games so far, and hope that Germany beat Denmark (something overwhelmingly likely).

Even if Germany field some fringe players, they're mostly of great quality and will be anxious to impress in order to try and force their way into the first XI for the knockout stages. To that end, I think 7.413/2 on the Dutch to qualify out of the group is a huge price. We've seen time and time again how these situations are turned on their head in tournament football, and Holland have a mighty array of attacking players. That has to be worth a couple of quid of your hard-earned.

Tonight, Spain take on Republic of Ireland in a daunting encounter for the Boys in Green. While I expect Giovanni Trapattoni to have ironed out those uncharacteristic defensive errors that reared their ugly head against Croatia, Spain are an absolute cut above. I fancy them to win and win well, so Spain -1 & -1.5 at 1.674/6 is a fairly safe bet.

Just one more before I pop out to pick up my England-Sweden tickets (more on that this weekend), I noticed that France are 2.915/8 to win Group D. I think we'd all agree that they're the best team in the group and I'd fancy them as favourites to top it.2.915/8 seems very generous to me.

Back the Netherlands to qualify from Group B @ 7.06/1