chickendinner make an excellent call on Holland’s run so far

Apart from that whole thing about Paul McCartney dying in the sixties and being replaced by a doppelganger, The Spoiler isn’t one to believe conspiracy theories. However, we couldn’t help but take notice of the chickendinner bet blog, which correctly called the second Group C games, last Thursday night:

Picture this perfectly plausible scenario for a second. Tomorrow, buoyed by victory over Italy in the opening game, Holland defeat a France side struggling to find their feet.

In the other Group C game, Italy are low on confidence after their shock loss and Romania are able to take a point by “playing to their strengths” as they did against France.

That would create a situation where Holland would have the group sewn up with six points, Romania would be second with two points and Italy and France would be struggling with one point.

At first glance, it’s hard to imagine Romania beating Holland, which would mean a straight shootout for the final place between Italy and France, with the winner qualifying.

But what if Holland, already having the group won, gave Romania an easy ride, deciding to rest their stars and playing cautiously, not wanting to pick up any suspensions and injuries in a meaningless game.

Were Romania to beat Holland, the Dutch would still win the group but it would mean, regardless of the result of Italy and France’s game, Romania would qualify in second.

If this were to happen, Italy and France would both be eliminated, which would benefit Holland because it means that they could not come up against either in the semi finals.

Of course Italy are no strangers to conspiracy theories, there’s always an excuse when they go out. At the 2002 World Cup, hosts South Korea eliminated them after extra time in a game where Totti was controversially sent off and a goal wrongly disallowed. Then at Euro 2004, Sweden and Denmark conveniently drew their final game to eliminate Italy, who hadn’t even lost a game in the tournament.

The price on a Holland 1st/ Romania 2nd group forecast has now shrunk from 13/2 to 0.89/1 with Betfair. For more first class betting information on Euro 2008, you’d best take a look at chickendinner.