Euro 2008: Still a close race in most groups

Yesterday's qualifier for the Euro 2008 was kind of a boring event. Sure, the German national team was playing way better than their Welsh counterpart who seemed to be very inexperienced without retired Ryan Giggs and released Craig Bellamy. The first goal was superb. Hitzlsperger winning the ball in midfield, Kuranyi taking it up and carrying it to the right side, then passing the ball just at the right moment to Klose who with his first touch scores the leading goal. This is football the way I want to see it. Fast, strong, technical, great.
But after this ther came nothing. Germany scored another goal on an error by a Welsh defender, but that was it. Of course there were a lot of players missing on the team (e.g. Lahm, Frings, Ballack, Borowski, Schneider), of course the 11 players on the pitch never had the opportunity to play with each other before. But one could expect a little bit more effort against a team from Wales who just couldn't keep up with the German strength. Well, Germany are now 8 points clear off the third place in their qualifying group and with only four games to go it sure looks like they will be at Austria and Switzerland in 2008.
It's a different story for a lot of other European football super powers. England came away with a 3-0 win at Wembley against Israel, a match they had to win no matter what. But this result will count for nothing if they can't keep up their momentum against Russia on Wednesday. The Netherlands won 2-0 against Bulgaria at the AmsterdamArena, but that also didn't look very convincing. In the top game of yesterday's qualifiers Italy and France played a scoreless draw at Giuseppe-Meazza-Stadium. A tense match but the result leaves Italy in third place in their group trailing 2nd place Scotland who won against Lithuania. One of biggest surprises would be Turkey only drawing 2-2 against Malta which leaves 2002 World Cup 3rd place Turkey struggling to qualify. Spain also drew against Iceland and left points in their race against Sweden. Still they are in 2nd place, on equal points with Northern Ireland.