Czech Republic V Poland : UEFA Euro 2012 Match Preview - Football
Published: 16 Jun 2012 - 15:00:32
Co-hosts Poland face must-win game
It is win or bust for co-hosts Poland as they take on the Czech Republic on Saturday knowing that any other result would see them exit the European Championship.
Poland may have played well in their opening two Group A matches but they failed to win either and currently sit third with just two points.
The Czech Republic have three points and failure to win would mean that the Poles could overtake neither the Czechs nor group leaders Russia, who have four points.
A goal and a man to the good and playing vibrant attacking football, Franciszek Smuda's team looked to be fulfilling the pre-tournament promise that a 2-2 friendly draw with Germany in September had started to foment.
It has been a bumpy ride so far for the hosts but Smuda is confident his side can get the result they need and continue in the competition.
"I'd like for the best to be yet to come, and I'd have nothing against it being in the match with the Czech Republic," he said.
Poland have some injury worries, though, with defender Damien Perquis and midfielders Eugen Polanski and Dariusz Dudka all doubts having suffered injuries against Russia on Tuesday.
An abdominal strain has made Dudka the most doubtful of the three while Perquis is recovering from a gashed shin and Polanski is suffering from a bruised knee.
"Our match with the Czechs is crucial, perhaps our most important in recent years," said midfielder Rafal Murawski.
"We have to win it, and we mean to win it. The Czechs are within our range."
While Poland have injury concerns and need to win, the Czechs are in almost exactly the same boat.
They could qualify with a draw but only if Greece don't beat Russia, otherwise they will be out.
It means they too need to win to be sure of progressing but they have concerns over two crucial players, captain Tomas Rosicky and goalkeeper Petr Cech.
Arsenal midfielder Rosicky is the bigger doubt after what he believes is a recurrence of a calf injury he suffered in the final Premier League game of the season forced him to miss the second half of their 2-1 win over Greece.
Chelsea goalkeeper Cech has a sore shoulder and is desperate to play to make up for his gaffe that allowed the Greeks a route back into a match in which the Czechs had established an early two-goal lead.
"The blunder looks comic, but such things happen in football," said Cech after dropping a cross that allowed Fanis Gekas to score.
"I believe this was enough. I won't make a silly mistake like this again."
Since the Czech Republic split from Slovakia to form an independent country, they have lost every time they have played away to Poland.
However, the last meeting between the sides was a Czech victory in Prague in a World Cup qualifier three years ago.
.
Czech Republic V Poland - view commentary, squad, and statictics of the game live.
Related Czech Republic News
Guard injured in Edmonton shooting a member of military - CBC
Police in Edmonton have identified the injured guard in the university mall shooting as Matthew Schuman, a full-time corporal and Air Force firefighter stationed at Canadian Forces Base Edmonton.
They say Schuman had a second job at G4S Security. Three of his colleagues were killed in what police are calling a botched robbery attempt by one of their own at the University of Alberta's Hub Mall. Officials at the mall say it is "fully operational" this weekend but retailers have the option to open up or not.
Police are still hunting a man they believe is a "dangerous" killer. Travis Baumgartner was still at large after the shooting, which happened in the wee hours of Friday morning as he and his security crew were re-stocking a bank machine on the ground floor of one of the school's residences, which also has shops on the main floor.
While police are calling what happened an armed robbery, there has been no confirmation that any money was taken. An abandoned armoured car was later found halfway across town near a G4S office with its lights on and its motor running.
The 21-year-old Baumgartner is being sought on warrants for three counts of first-degree murder and one of attempted murder.
Late Friday night, Schuman was still fighting for his life in an Edmonton hospital with critical injuries.
Baumgartner's mother made a plea to her son late Friday to turn himself in. She alluded to a fight the two had before the shooting and apologized to her son.
Michelle Shegelski was named as one of the employees of G4S who was slain early Friday at the University of Alberta. (Facebook)"I'm sorry that we had an argument last night and that we had bad words between us, but I want you to come home and do the right thing. Let's work this out together," she said in a statement read by police.
Friends say Baumgartner had designs on being a police officer, but settled into a job with G4S instead after deciding he didn't have what it takes for law enforcement.
He likes video games and calls himself a recreational drug user. In an online dating profile, he says he is a "great guy" who is laid back and has a "10" physique.
But his Facebook page is much darker, quoting the anarchist Joker from the movie Dark Knight and musing about "popping people off."
Police have also released some details about the people Baumgartner allegedly killed.
Michelle Shegelski was 26 and had just gotten married to her husband, Victor, a former military man who, coincidentally, had just returned to school at the University of Alberta. Eddie Rejano, 39, and Brian Ilesic, 35, were the other two guards killed.
Niagara Falls Daredevil 'On Cloud Nine' After Wire Walk - People
Nik Wallenda
Geoff Robins/AFP/Getty
And although Nik Wallenda's 1,800-foot trip over the roaring waters of Horseshoe Falls, the largest of the three falls, secured him some serious bragging rights, the daredevil seemed more interested in the estimated 112,000 people who gathered to witness the spectacle (and the millions more who tuned in on TV).
"I hope what I do and what I just did inspires people around the world to reach for the skies," Wallenda, 33, told reporters after the walk, in which he wore a safety tether as per the request of ABC, which helped sponsor the stunt, according to the Associated Press.
He said he felt like he was "on cloud nine" after braving "wind coming from every which way" and blinding mist on his 30-minute walk from the U.S. into Canada.
"There was no way to focus on the movement of the cable," he said. "If I looked down at the cable, there was water moving everywhere. And if I looked up, there was heavy mist blowing in front of my face. So it was a very unique, a weird sensation."
So how did he overcome the forces of nature to complete the historical walk, which paid homage to his circus family, the Flying Wallendas, and his great-grandfather, the late Karl Wallenda (who died during a stunt in Puerto Rico)?
"A lot of praying," he said. "That's for sure."
Suu Kyi receives Nobel Peace Prize 21 years late - Reuters
OSLO |
OSLO (Reuters) - Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi finally received her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on Saturday after spending 15 years under house arrest, and said her country's full transformation to democracy was still far off.
"What the Nobel Peace Prize did was to draw me once again into the world of other human beings outside the isolated area in which I lived, to restore a sense of reality to me," Suu Kyi said as the packed crowd, led by Norway's King Harald and Queen Sonja, rose in a standing ovation at the ornate Oslo City Hall.
Suu Kyi, 66, the Oxford University-educated daughter of General Aung San, Myanmar's assassinated independence hero, said much remained to be resolved in her country.
"Hostilities have not ceased in the far north; to the west, communal violence resulting in arson and murder were taking place just several days before I started out the journey that has brought me here today," said Suu Kyi, on her first visit to Europe in nearly a quarter of a century.
"There still remain (political) prisoners in Burma. It is to be feared that because the best known detainees have been released, the remainder, the unknown ones, will be forgotten," she said, wearing a purple traditional Burmese dress and looking strong and healthy after falling ill on Thursday.
Still, Suu Kyi - elected to parliament in April - said she was confident President Thein Sein wanted to put the country on a new path.
"I don't think we should fear reversal," she told public broadcaster NRK. "(But) I don't think we should take it for granted there is no reversal."
Suspending rather than lifting sanctions was also the right move to keep pressure on the government, she said a day after arriving from Switzerland to a jubilant, dancing and chanting crowd, which showered her with flowers.
"If these reforms prove to be a façade, then the rewards will be taken away."
INSTRUMENTAL
Suu Kyi, who spent a total of 15 years under house arrest between 1989 and her release in late 2010, never left Myanmar even during brief periods of freedom after 1989, afraid the military would not let back in.
Her sons Kim and Alexander accepted the Nobel prize on her behalf in 1991, with her husband Michael Aris also attending the ceremony. A year later Suu Kyi said she would use the $1.3 million prize money to establish a health and education trust for Burmese people.
She was unable to be with Aris, an Oxford academic, when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and died in Britain in 1999.
On Saturday, Kim and Anthony Aris, her late husband's identical twin brother, attended the ceremony.
Suu Kyi thanked Norway, a nation of just 5 million people, for its support and the instrumental role it played in Myanmar's transformation.
In 1990, the Bergen-based Rafto Foundation awarded its annual prize to Suu Kyi, after a Norwegian aid worker in South-East Asia highlighted her work.
The award provided lasting publicity for her non-violent struggle against Myanmar's military junta, putting her in the international spotlight and setting the stage a year later for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Norway has also provided a home to the Democratic Voice of Burma, an opposition television and radio outlet, which broadcasts uncensored news into Myanmar.
Suu Kyi acknowledged that recent violence between Rakhine Buddhists and stateless Muslim Rohingyas in the northwestern Rakhine region was a test of Myanmar's transformation but she blamed lawlessness for the escalation.
The violence, which displaced 30,000 people and killed 50 by government accounts, flared last month with a rampage of rock-hurling, arson and machete attacks, after the gang rape and murder of a Buddhist woman that was blamed on Muslims.
"The very first time a crime was committed... they should have taken action in accordance with the rule of law," Suu Kyi told the BBC.
"If they had been able to do that, and to satisfy all parties involved that justice was done ... I do not think these disturbances would have grown to such proportions."
Tensions stem from an entrenched, long-standing distrust of around 800,000 Muslim Rohingyas, who are recognized by neither Myanmar nor neighboring Bangladesh, and are largely considered illegal immigrants.
Suu Kyi is also due to visit Ireland, Britain and France.
(Editing by Sophie Hares and Ralph Gowling)
0 Responses to "Czech Republic V Poland : UEFA Euro 2012 Match Preview - Football"
Post a Comment