Michel Salgado looks back on the first week of the big tournament by Aaron› 21 Jun 2012

We've had a week of fantastic football to enjoy, but what have the experts made of Europe's finest so far? We've got one of the most respected pundits around to give us his verdict on the first week of games, and what we can look forward to in the rest of the tournament - here's what Michel Salgado had to say...

"The results so far have been as I would expect, the only surprise being Holland, runners up in the last World Cup but they haven't been able to get a point so far and they need a miracle to get through. Spain's display against Ireland has been fantastic and I have to say that Germany are being really solid, while Russia are playing good counter attacking football as well. Mario Gomez has been the player of the tournament so far but Hummel's performance in defence has been outstanding as well, and I'd also like to highlight Shevchenko scoring two very important goals to turn things around against Sweden.

Most of the teams are playing a counter attacking style of football, with only Spain and Germany seem to care a little bit about the ball in possession. England performed quite well for 50 minutes on Monday, but after that they started struggling to keep the ball in midfield. France then took control of the game and pushed up to force England to sit deep. At the end of the day the draw was a good result to start with especially with all the injuries in midfield before starting the competition and the level of the opposition.

The group is getting really tight as Ukraine have beaten Sweden in the first game but of course England still have enough to get through - after the results of the first date they will need to put everything on the pitch to beat Sweden as leaving everything for the last game would be very dangerous especially when you have to play against the hosts.

As a Spaniard, I've been pleased with what I've seen so far - there were some shadows against a really tough Italian team, and then a great performance against Ireland to vanish any doubts people might have had about the big quality of the Spanish squad. Torres has shown his strong mentality to score two goals and to prove the critics wrong.

Finally, I think the atmosphere in the grounds has been really good so far, and I think Eastern Europe needed a big competition like this one to prove their ability to the world."

Thanks to Michel for giving us his view on the first week of the tournament, and thanks to FourFourTwo for letting us use their fantastic picture. You can read Michel Salgado's column in FourFourTwo magazine every month.  

Category:
England