We’re belatedly kicking off our Euro 2012 coverage–belated since the tournament is kicking off later today (in a few minutes actually). We’ve got a few preview posts up to help you get ready for the next 3+ weeks of international European football–31 matches* in 8 cities in two countries (Poland & Ukraine) over the next 23 days–starting with Poland-Greece and Russia-Czech today (6pmCET/12pmET in Warsaw and 8:45pmCET/2:45pmET in Wroclaw, respectively) and continuing until the final in Kiev on July 1.
We’ll also put up ongoing coverage as the tournament progresses. Ideally we’ll put up at least a daily wrapup and/or preview post–the previous day’s results, the day’s upcoming fixtures, a roundup of links, maybe even the occasional liveblog. But at the very least an open thread, with the hope of getting some commentary in the comments–which we haven’t really had since the World Cup two years ago (which happened to be our launch btw–happy 2yr birthday to us)
*: 31 matches arising from 24 group stage matches (6*4: 6 matches arising from round-robin in each of the 4 groups of 4 teams apiece) plus 4 quarterfinal matches + 2 semifinal matches + the final. (Not sure if there’s a 3rd place match, but if so it doesn’t really count for anything, so I’m not counting it either). I do enjoy the occasional combinatorial exercise.
Part 4 of our Kicking Off Euro 2012 series: where to go for ongoing coverage over the next few weeks. We’ll try to be posting, but here’s where we’ll be going ourselves to keep up with the tournament:
Guardian Football: Our primary source for football news. Still anglocentric in its top headlines and most-read articles, but probably the least so of the English papers, Go directly to their Euro 2012 section (but also see below for a more detailed guide to their coverage).
ZonalMarking: The other site we’ll be visiting daily–the tactics blog run by Michael Cox, who also contributes columns to the Guardian. He’s already posted team-by-team previews in his Euro2012 section, and will no doubt be posting match analyses daily.
If somehow we’re still hankering for additional commentary, we might drop in on the Euro blogs of FourFourTwo or In Bed With Maradona. We’ll probably call up Goal.com and espnfc.com on occasion. And lately we’ve been reading a lot of Grantland–encouraged to see there are two previewpieces up. Though neither are by Grantland contributor Brian Philips, who is one of our must-read football writers, and who also oversees the infrequently updated Run of Play–so we’ll also be looking for commentary from him and on there (or lacking those, certainly via his twitter).
But more on the Guardian and their Euro 2012 coverage. They’ve got their usual stable of excellent columnists covering the tourney–we’ll be looking in particular for commentary from Sid Lowe commentary on Spain; Rafael Honigstein on Germany; Michael Cox on tactics; Barney Ronay on the absurd; and Jonathan Wilson on historical, tactical, and Eastern European analysis and arcana.
No doubt those guys will be among James Richardson’s guests on the pod. During the season, it’s Football Weekly, which we listen to religiously twice-weekly. But for Euros they go into hyperdrive and morph into “Euro 2012 Football DAILY”; that’s right, a daily dose of the pod.
The pod lands daily for the next three weeks!
In addition to their usual contributors, the Guardian has assembled an “Experts Network” for the tournament (“A unique collaboration with media outlets from around Europe bringing a local flavour and expertise to coverage of Euro 2012 on guardian.co.uk”)–see Part 2 of Euro 2012 gear-up for links to the resulting team-by-team previews.
There will be plenty of their idiosyncratic liveblogs (often penned, we hope, by Barry Glendenning)–not only for every match, but also a daily liveblog for the tournament news:
You will be able to follow live minute-by-minute coverage of every game in Poland and Ukraine, while we will also have a live blog every day throughout the tournament as well. Our writers will be on hand with updates, both here, on our Twitter interactive and on daily live webchats every lunchtime.
As our ever, we welcome and look forward to your thoughts, comments, accusations of lazy journalism and bias both on Twitter and in the comments section below the line. If there’s a better way of whiling away the working day that doesn’t involve breaking the law, we certainly can’t think of one.
The Twitter interactive is something we just came across: an interactive map, showing what and where their writers’ are tweeting. You can even filter by venue, group, or team:
Guardian Football's interactive Euro 2012 twitter map
Part 3 of our Kicking Off Euro 2012 series: a very loosely curated collection of various tournament previews. Clearly we haven’t read them all–this serves as a sort of list of bookmarks that we’ll try to return to over the course of the tournament:
Part 2 of our Kicking Off Euro 2012 series: team-by-team previews pulled from a handful of sites we frequent:
(key: GEN = Guardian Expert Network, ZM = ZonalMarking, FFT = FourFourTwo, IBWM = In Bed With Maradona, SI = Sports Illustrated; * = by Jonathan Wilson)
Part 1 of our Kicking Off Euro 2012 series: a couple nice interactive calendars–and below them, the full fixture list:
Actually, first off, for us US viewers, here is ESPN’s fixture list along with details of their television coverage. The majority of matches are on ESPN, with a handful on ESPN2–and all of them will be available for streaming on ESPN3.com! (Which is great not only for those of us without cable, but also because it means all the matches should be archived for replay after the fact–particularly helpful since kickoff times are 12pmET and 2:45pmET.)
Ok, on to the fancy interactive calendars. UEFA.com’s “tournament map” might seem a bit dense at first glance, but that’s because there’s a lot of information there–it nicely gives you all the groups and fixtures in one view:
UEFA.com's Euro 2012 "Tournament Map" (click for larger image)
Click on the image above for a better view, but better to click thru for the interactive version on UEFA’s site–rolling over a given group, team, date or venue highlights those particular matches. Even better: clicking on a particular group, team, fixture or venue brings up a pop-up box with details and links to the rest of UEFA’s copious Euro 2012 coverage. We’ll likely have this tournament map open in our browser the rest of the month.
(Some notes on the design: it’s a 2D matrix with dates across the top, groups/teams on the LHS, and venues on the RHS. Which highlights the rational design of the tournament: each group plays its matches in just two venues, and the group stage fixtures rotate through the four groups in order: first two Group A matches on the June 8, then Group B on June 9, Group C on June 10, Group D on June 11; then the second set of group matches (Groups A-D on June 12-15, respectively) and the third and final set of group matches (Groups A-D on June 16-19, respectively)).
As they did for World Cup 2010, Marca.com has produced a beautiful and elliptical interactive calendar for Euro2012. You can again view fixtures by team, date, group or venue, by rolling over the points on the inner perimeter. It’s available in English or Spanish—and conveniently you can set your timezone for kickoff times. By rolling over the segments in the outer perimeter, you can also bring up a map Poland and Ukraine with the venues, or a map of Europe with the competing nations:
Marca.com's elliptical Calendario
Finally, here’s the full fixture list:
Friday, June 8
Warsaw, Group A: Poland v Greece (12pmET)
Wroclaw, Group A: Russia v Czech Republic (2:45pmET)
Saturday, June 9
Kharkiv, Group B: Holland v Denmark (12pmET)
Lviv, Group B: Germany v Portugal (2:45pmET)
Sunday, June 10
Gdansk, Group C: Spain v Italy (12pmET)
Poznan, Group C: Republic of Ireland v Croatia (2:45pmET)
Monday, June 11
Donetsk, Group D: France v England (12pmET)
Kiev, Group D: Ukraine v Sweden (2:45pmET)
Tuesday, June 12
Wroclaw, Group A: Greece v Czech Republic (12pmET)
Warsaw, Group A: Poland v Russia (2:45pmET)
Wednesday, June 13
Lviv, Group B: Denmark v Portugal (12pmET)
Kharkiv, Group B: Holland v Germany (2:45pmET)
Thursday, June 14
Poznan, Group C: Italy v Croatia (12pmET)
Gdansk, Group C: Spain v Republic of Ireland (2:45pmET)
Friday, June 15
Kiev, Group D: Sweden v England (12pmET)
Donetsk, Group D: Ukraine v France (2:45pmET)
Saturday, June 16
Wroclaw, Group A: Czech Republic v Poland (2:45pmET)
Warsaw, Group A: Greece v Russia (2:45pmET)
Sunday, June 17
Kharkiv, Group B: Portugal v Holland (2:45pmET)
Lviv, Group B: Denmark v Germany (2:45pmET)
Monday, June 18
Gdansk, Group C: Croatia v Spain (2:45pmET)
Poznan, Group C: Italy v Republic of Ireland (2:45pmET)
Tuesday, June 19
Donetsk, Group D: England v Ukraine (2:45pmET)
Kiev, Group D: Sweden v France (2:45pmET)
QUARTER-FINALS
Thursday, June 21
QF1: Warsaw: Winner A v Runner-up B (2:45pmET)
Friday, June 22
QF2: Gdansk: Winner B v Runner-up A (2:45pmET)
Saturday, June 23
QF3: Donetsk: Winner C v Runner-up D (2:45pmET)
Sunday, June 24
QF4: Kiev: Winner D v Runner-up C (2:45pmET)
SEMI-FINALS
Wednesday, June 27
SF1: Donetsk: Winner QF1 v Winner QF3 (2:45pmET)
Thursday, June 28
SF2: Warsaw: Winner QF2 v Winner QF4 (2:45pmET)
FINAL Sunday, July 1
Kiev: Winner SF1 v Winner SF2 (2:45pmET)
