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A1: Poland
A2: Czech Republic

I'm going to assume that the fact that pretty much none of the Russian lineup play in a foreign league means they're not up to standard.

B1: Netherlands
B2: Germany

Group B seems rather hard to call, but I drop Portugal.

C1: Spain
C2: Croatia

I'm assuming Croatia scores an upset against Italy. Sorry, Ireland.

D1: France
D2: Ukraine

Ukraine should qualify as a host nation, and France beat England.

For the knockout stages, qualifiers are bolded:

Q1: Poland - Germany
Q2: Netherlands - Czech Republic
Q3: Spain - Ukraine
Q4: France - Croatia

The quarterfinals seem clear-cut, but who knows. There could be an upset. The Germany-Poland game should be fun to read about in the respective nationalistic tabloids.

S1: Germany - Spain
S2: Netherlands - France

The first semifinal is best described by the recent jab from the national team coach to the political class: "winning the Eurocup won't solve Spain's problems". I'm predicting that Germany would have lost to Spain in the last 3 major tournaments (Euro 2008, FIFA 2010 and Euro 2012) which seems interesting in and of itself.

F: Spain - Netherlands

Has anyone won the Eurocup twice in a row? Anyway, Spain should win the Fair play award like last time.

If you are not convinced, try it on someone who has not been entirely debauched by economics. — Piero Sraffa

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Thu Jun 7th, 2012 at 09:24:43 AM EST

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