Croatia 2 – 1 Germany
Austria 1 – 1 Poland
Well what do you expect from a West Ham alumni? I’ve always liked Slaven Bilic, from his days kicking the bums of the Hammer’s opponents, right up to ridding us of the cheesy-grinned, umbrella-toting Yorkshire idiot. That he had to eliminate England from this tournament to execute the latter task was, in this correspondent’s opinion, a small price to pay. His Croatia team made Germany look very ordinary last night and could have been more convincing winners than the eventual scoreline suggests. Not only that but he obviously had fun doing it; pacing up and down and gesturing constantly as if moving pieces around a Subbuteo pitch, he was in constant motion and celebrated each goal as if he’d scored it himself. Top bloke, and while my attitude to Germany’s team has softened since their entertaining run in the World Cup 2 years ago, I was not sorry that he got such a great result.
Having said that Germany are beginning to tick the boxes required of an England surrogate; heroic failure in the World Cup, unexpectedly beaten up by Croatia with a combination of dodgy left-back defending and an unlucky (although not to say hilarious) conceding of a late goal, good save initially though it was from Lehmann. They even play in white shirts and have a Rooney-type in Schweinsteiger – Rooney-esque not in footballing ability, although he did fairly well when he came on, but in displaying the sort of petulant action that gets you sent off in important games to leave your team in the swill, England or what! Next thing you know, they’ll miss a penalty or two.
So Croatia join Portugal in the quarters and leave Germany needing something from their game against Austria on Monday in Vienna.
The Austrians will be hoping Herr Webb will be in charge of that game, after one-half of England’s pair of representatives in Euro2008 last night gifted the co-hosts and organisers a lifeline. The decision hardly merits the “controversial” tag pinned to it in many of the media’s reports today, Lewandowski’s attempt at three-falls-and-a-submission was, after all nailed-on. The only controversial thing is that, given the UEFA instructions at the beginning of the tournament, more referees haven’t done the same; as Lawro said “if you don’t pull his shirt he doesn’t give a penalty”.
Poland’s sour grapes will not cut much ice in this direction and, by all accounts, (I was running around a sports hall while the game was on) Austria probably deserved a draw having spurned several chances and had another penalty appeal waved away earlier on. It was amusing though to study the Austrian faces as the whistle blew for the penalty, to a man they assumed Howard had penalised one of their own and were ready to accost him Terry-like until they realised he was pointing to the spot. I wonder how much of the free-beer awarded to Vastic will be sitting on Howard Webb’s doorstep when he returns.
It may be that, like me, he remembers hiding behind the settee as a youngster back in ’73, listening as his father swore at the Clown Tomaszewski, and thought “Now, I will have my revenge Poland, take that, kapow!! thwack!! “. Now all he has to do is to get himself picked for the Germany game and pay them back for Mexico ’70, Wembley ’72, Spain ’82, Italia ’90 and England ‘96

Perhaps swayed by the thought that beating England would make Croatia invincible, five of you correctly picked the result, although only Dave could get the score right.
Picking the draw in the other game was more straight-forward as 8 people got maximum points and also owe Spiders a pint or two.