June 23rd and today I'm going back 25 years to Euro 96 once again and the Quarter Final between Portugal and the Czech Republic played at Villa Park, Birmingham.
As you can see from the programme, it covered the two Quarter Finals taking place that day albeit that one game was in Manchester and the other in Birmingham. I'd be pretty sure that nobody managed to attend both games so I suppose that the double header programme must have saved on printing costs? I imagine that they must have printed quite a few too as you can buy a copy from a dealer today for just £5 which isn't much of a mark up on the original cover price.
The format of the tournament was such that the winners and runners up of the four Groups of four at the Group stage went through to the Quarter Final. There was no Round of 16 as there is today. Portugal had won Group D seeing off Turkey and Croatia and having drawn with the defending champions and seeds Denmark. The Czech Republic, at their first ever European Championships as an independent nation, were runners up in Group C with a moderate record of won one, drawn one, lost one against Italy, Russia and Germany respectively. Their 2-1 victory over Italy had seen them through on their head to head with Italy who finished on the same number of points and with a better goal difference than the Czechs.
Portugal were the clear favourites and they had one of the world's top players on show in Luis Figo. Figo would go on to win the Ballon D'Or in 2000. In 1996 Figo was still a Barcelona player and he became a rare breed indeed when he moved directly to Real Madrid in 2000. The move made him instantly unpopular at Barca and it's hard to overstate the level of animosity felt by Catalans towards Figo. Figo suffered a large number of objects being thrown at him at future "El Classicos" (the Spanish name for the Barcelona v Real Madrid match-up) including, on one occasion, a pig's head!
Once again the English public wasted an opportunity to see one of the world's greatest players. The attendance at Villa Park was only 26,832 or about 2/3rds of capacity. The game proved to be hugely entertaining and one of the surprises of the tournament with a goal from Karel Poborski early in the second half winning it for the Czechs. That goal is renowned because of Poborski's exquisite execution scooping the ball high over the advancing keeper's head and into the net (take a look at the video attached to my blog). In the final few minutes the Czechs did have to cope with the sending off of their full back Rodoslav Latal but the score remained 1-0 and they advanced to the Semi-Finals where they would play France. As we would see, the surprises weren't quite over yet.
CRB Match No. 1048
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