Group F - Portugal

Group F - Portugal

The final group is group F and it could be argued that it's the weakest group of the six in that Portugal, the highest ranking team in it, are only seventh favourites to win the tournament. Surely, the seeding system was correct, the six favourites would be distributed across all six groups.

Anyway, the other teams in the group are probably quite happy that they've been drawn with Portugal rather than any of the other top seeded teams. Austria had a strong qualification campaign and are 9th favourites to win the competition. Their first match will be against their historical allies, the Hungarians, another team that only qualified through the play offs. Hungary have a had a long spell in the wilderness and must be happy to be there, despite all the usual claims that they're not just there to make up the numbers.

Portugal themselves start against the most remarkable team in the competition really, Iceland, a country with a population of just over 300,000. Apparently, about 2% of their entire population went to Amsterdam to watch them beat Holland in one of the final qualifying matches, surely some kind of record. If Russia brought that same percentage to Marseille for the England match, there'd be 5 million of them!

Iceland amazingly almost won their group but qualified automatically ahead of the much fancied Holland and Turkey.

Assuming the group goes to plan, one has to reckon on Portugal and Austria going through to the knock out stages with perhaps Iceland nicking 3rd spot. But I doubt any of them will go much further.

I'm predicting Portugal to loose to Belgium in the round of 16 game and Austria to fall to Wales (or Russia). If Iceland do make it into 3rd they will probably face the prospect of Germany or Spain waiting for them. 

So bye bye group F, I'm afraid.

Aljice
Perth Airport, on my way to France!