Greece unlikely to spring a surprise this time

Today, in the European Championship, Spain play Russia, while Greece, so surprisingly the winners in Portugal, meet Sweden.

Don't ask me to make predictions, as people frequently do. Who ever could have envisaged Greece winning the last such tournament, in Portugal, and beating the hosts, Portugal, twice into the bargain. The enormously shrewd and wily German coach Otto Rehhagel is in charge of the Greeks again, and they sailed impressively through their qualifying group. But I tend to think that lightning doesn't strike twice. And that their various opponents will be all too well aware that these will be anything but Greeks bearing gifts.

Not least because the new reality in this Greek team is the 28 year old striker, Theofanis Gekas. He emerged with the unfashionable Kalithea club, moved on to Panithiaikos of Athens, before making the move to the Bundesliga, first at Bochum, now, prolifically, with Bayer Leverkusen. With them he topped the League goal scorers in 2007. His opportunism has made Greece a more adventurous side than the breakaway experts were four years ago.

Generous odds

The bookies are giving Russia at 22 to I and I would call these pretty generous odds. Unfortunately for Guus Hiddink's accomplished Andrei Archavine, star of the Uefa Cup final in Manchester against a leaden Rangers, he is suspended. And it is now his free-scoring teammate, striker Pavel Pogrebniak. Unfortunately, he couldn't recover from injury in time. Archavine scored no fewer than 10 goals for Russia in the qualifiers, showing he can finish moves as well as engineer them.

There is yet a third Zenit star in midfielder Konstantin Zyrianov, a Siberian, now 30, voted Best Player of the 2007 Russian tournament. He scored nine goals for his club in 2007.

Portugal and Cristiano Ronaldo take the field tomorrow against a Czech team that can no longer call on the drive of Pavel Nedved in midfield and seem to have been growing old together, though they have one of the game's best goalkeepers in the towering Petr Cech.

Four years ago, Portugal were something of a damp squib on their own soil, twice losing to the Greeks and lucky to get past England on penalties in the Lisbon quarter final. Brazil's Big Phil Scolari will, as in the last World Cup, be in charge, while reportedly pondering an offer to manage Chelsea.

Germany, meanwhile, will have a tough job against Croatia on Thursday. They will need to have Micahel Ballack at his best.