Bilic’s Swansong Points To Croatia Being The Perfect Euro 2012 Dark Horses

Conventional logic suggests that before every major international football tournament, there must be at least one surprise packet, one cheval noire that punches above their fighting weight and reaches the business end of the competition. Indeed, at the European Championships of 1992 and 2004, the curveballs went one step further in confounding the critics by winning the whole shooting match. Denmark’s players summoned themselves from their sun loungers as a last minute replacement for war torn Yugoslavia and their lack of preparation did not hinder them as they emerged from the other side of the Kattegat Strait with the Henri Delaunay Trophy ready to declare at border control. Fast forward twelve years and Portugal were on the receiving end of a Greek tragedy inflicted in their own backyard as Otto Rehhagel’s master plan came to fruition as the previously unheralded Greeks won the competition against all odds as other more illustrious nations saw their chances wilt in the Iberian sunshine.

Recent history in the European Championships suggest that there should be one nation from that outside the elite that at least makes a run to the semi-finals, with the Czech Republic being beaten by Oliver Bierhoff’s golden goal at Wembley in Euro ’96, while four years ago it was Fatih Terim’s Turkish charges that made it to the last four before succumbing to Germany. While the field of sixteen in Poland and Ukraine is headed by three of the four semi-finalists from the 2010 World Cup, there is surely a place up for grabs in the last four of Euro 2012 for a dark horse, an entry from leftfield. A kind draw for Euro 2008′s other surprise semi-finalists Russia puts them in the frame for this candidacy, especially considering conditions will not be dissimilar to their homeland. An ageing squad light on recent game time could count against them, although it could also have the opposite effect as some of Europe’s more overworked footballers surely have potential to be lions in the winter and lambs in the summer. A strong qualifying campaign from Euro 2004 winners Greece suggests that they will be doing more than making up the numbers in Group A, while the presence of Cristiano Ronaldo in Portugal’s line-up means they should not be written off against Germany and Holland. Getting the best out of Ronaldo at international level remains a constant conundrum, however, and Portugal’s preparation matches for the tournament have offered little cheer, with a 3-1 home defeat by Turkey suggesting that Portugal’s defensive vulnerabilities remain unsolved. And while as a patriotic Englishman, I would like to see nothing more at the culmination of the tournament than an English success, the patchwork nature of Roy Hodgson’s squad, allied with his safety first mentality and an inability to keep possession effectively for two halves of football means that it would be a pipe dream of epic proportions to expect Steven Gerrard to be holding aloft the trophy on July 1.