Amr Obaid (Cairo)
The names of the “Big Eight” in the “Euro 2024” Championship have been determined, to draw the features of the real competition for the title, and the current version has returned to give the representatives of the Western European continent a “ray of hope” to restore the glories that have been absent for nearly a “quarter of a century”, with the presence of 4 “Western” teams representing half of the number qualified for the current quarter-finals, and the French team was the last champion of “Western Europe” when it lifted the cup in 2000, before the “complete control” of the countries of the south of the “Old Continent” over the title in recent versions.
Western Europe has a good chance to secure the title if its representatives are able to overcome their current competitors. At that time, the “golden square” will be purely Western, if Germany, France, the Netherlands and England succeed in defeating Spain, Portugal, Turkey (the south) and Switzerland (the centre), respectively. However, it will certainly not be easy, similar to what happened in Euro 2016, when 4 teams representing Western Europe were also in the quarter-finals, facing two teams from the south, a party from the north and another from the east. In fact, Portugal alone carried the “southern banner” among three Western teams in the semi-finals, namely France, Germany and Wales. The “sailors” succeeded in keeping the cup within the borders of southern Europe at the time.
The current situation is different from the previous edition, “Euro 2020”, where the Western lights dimmed in the quarter-finals in a “remarkable” way, and the “industrialized” countries were content with reserving two seats for the England and Belgium teams, equally with the representatives of the south, Spain and Italy, and the same for the European center with the presence of Switzerland and the Czech Republic, in exchange for an eastern seat for Ukraine and a northern one for Denmark, and in the end the upper hand was for the champions of the south “the Italians” at the expense of the west “the English.”
“Eastern Europe” continued to move further away from the picture this time, as it has been absent from the podiums since the decline and disintegration of the Soviet Union, as no team representing that geographical spot in the “old continent” was able to reach the current quarter-finals, as both Georgia and Romania left the tournament in the round of 16, with the heaviest results as well, after the Georgian team lost by four goals to the “Spanish” and the Romanian team received three goals to the feet of the “Dutch”, and before them the Polish team and its Ukrainian counterpart were eliminated from the first round, noting that the “duo” was the last to represent “Eastern football” in the quarter-finals of the 2016 and 2020 versions, respectively.
#conflict #South #West #ignites #Euro
