The European Championship, a quadrinneal event is taking place in Portugal and started yesterday with a major upset: Portugal one of the favorites lost to unheralded Greece 2-1.
Yesterday I was watching the reaction of Portuguese fans to the loss on CNN International. All the blame was placed on Coach Felipe Scolari, the Brazilian coach who led Brazil to the World Cup title two years ago. This is ridiculous and the Portuguese fans should remember what happened in the 2002 World Cup: a heralded team lost it's opener to an opponent with a very weak football tradition, the USA with six of the same players who played in that game. Even the Portuguese players acknowledged that they were nervous and the Portuguese media seemed to call it right. It's ridiculous however, to blame Scolari for what the team has failed to do twice in successive major competitions.
so a baseball team does badly what do they do? they fire the manager. why? the manager didnt lose all those games, the team did, but its easier and cheaper to fire the manager than to get rid of the dumbass players who actually screwed up. i strongly suspect the same principle is at work there in portugal
Posted by: akaky | June 14, 2004 at 01:04 PM
There's another issue here, however: Scolari is Brazilian and one of the players he chose, Deco Souza is a Brazilian-born, naturalized Portuguese player who Scolari has chosen and backed. He also happens to be a fine player. There's a nationalist undercurrent to these comments by the fans and after the WC loss to the US in 2002 and the way they fell apart in the Korea game, the problem is with the players.
Posted by: Randy Paul | June 14, 2004 at 02:46 PM