Spain – Portugal, Germany - Italy
The two semifinals of this years´ European Championship in Poland and Ukraine are set. Germany beat Greece 4-2 and will face Italy, which defeated England in shoot-out, on Thursday, while Spain and Portugal encounter each other on Wednesday. They won their quarterfinals against France and Czech Republic.
Christiano Ronaldo is getting better with every day of the tournament.
Germany is under the best four Teams of this year´s European Championship in Poland and Ukraine. Joachim Loew´s eleven defeated Greece 4-2 in a match that was controlled by the Germans from minute one. Captain Phillip Lahm scored the leading goal just before the break and Greece´s Samaras surprisingly equalized the score ten minutes back into the game. Germany put up the heat then and scored three goals between minute 61 and 74. Sami Khedira, Miroslav Klose and Marco Reus were the scorers. A meaningless 4-2 by penalty in minute 89 just mattered to the score board.
On Thursday they will face Italy which beat England in penalty shoot-out after a goalless quarterfinal. The World Champions of 2006 were the better team over the whole distance giving England not much room to maneuver. Italy´s striker Mario Balotelli alone had more attempts on goal than the whole English team. England defended with all they had and managed to save themselves into penalty shoot-out. After the miss of second Italian shooter Montelivo it looked like England were about to get into semifinals. But Young and Ahley Cole both missed and Daimanti scored the final penalty to secure Italy´s advancement.
The other semifinal will take place between Spain and Portugal. Spain defeated France in a dominated but not really good match. The Spanish had more of the ball as usual but did not manage to get near France goal quite dangerously. Xavi Alonso scored twice in his 100th match for Spain, one header in minute 19 and one penalty in the after time.
Portugal beat Czech Republic thanks to a winner of Christiano Ronaldo who had already scored twice in the last group match against Nederland. The match of the two geographic neighbors will take place on Wednesday night.
