When the tournament started, the only group being discussed was the group of death, i.e. group C. The group contained last world cup’s defeated finalist’s France, the world cup champions Italy, Nederland’s and Romania.

As the tournament is coming to an end, none of the teams in the group of death is or was present in the semi-finals or the finals. In the end what happened to the teams that showed so much promise at the beginning. Let us look at the team’s performance…

Italy- as the world cup winners, they were believed to go long in the tournament. In the qualifiers they topped the group in front of France. In the euros, they were just not able to perform although they had the services of Luca Toni, the top scorer in the Bundesliga. The reasons being, Italian team consisted of old blood rather than the young, with the likes of Ambrosini, Gattuso and lack of creativity since the absence of Totti. All these factors contributed to the downfall of the Italians.

France- coached by Raymond Domenech, with the absence of Zidane, the French lacked creativity. In the tournament they were unable to score goals even with the presence of Thierry Henry. Performance given by the French was just very ordinary and they never looked like pregressing. France played boring football throughout the tournament and thus were not able to conquer.

Nederland- this was the last tournament for Marco Van Basten as the coach of the Oranje. They did very well in the tournament as they did not have a very fruitful tournament.

They were ordinary in the qualifiers but somehow manage to score some well crafted goals of the tournament. They were just outclassed by the Russians in the quarter finals, were their tournament finally ended.

Romania- the underdogs of the group, they gave a very good account of themselves. If they had defeated the Dutch, they would have qualified for the quarter finals. In the end they were just not able to find that effort but none the less, they had a pretty good tournament.

In the end, the only actual losers of the tournament were Italy, Nederland’s and France. Analysis over.