Dunphy focused on big three for Euro glory
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Not many people voice their opinion as much as Eamon Dunphy. Euro 2012 is just around the corner and ExtraTime.ie spoke to the man in question and he began by giving his views on the tournament and the potential winners. First off disagreeing with one of his colleagues choice of winner.
"Croatia won't win it. Liam(Brady) thinks they will but I don't think they will. They're a 50/1 shot and Liam likes an outsider but I don't think you can look past the big threats of the tournament - Holland, Germany and Spain. The Spanish might be a bit tired, they've been in big match after big match.
"David Villa won't be fit, certainly won't be match fit, he hasn't played and is a big player for them. I'd be more inclined to think that Holland, with Van Persie and Sneijder might be the team to win it."
Looking outside of the top three, Dunphy wouldn't be leaning towards anyone else to make any impression.
"I wouldn't fancy England, I wouldn't fancy France. Although they have Benzema, a very good player. Portugal, no, they have Ronaldo but not a lot else. I think Holland and Spain, Germany stand out for me. "
Looking at Ireland, the pundit is hoping that they can eradicate the some of the mistakes that were evident in qualifying and is hopeful they make more use of the ball when they get it.
"We're all fans really. You'd just hope that giving the ball away cheaply won't be a feature of this Championships and it has been a feature of so many of our qualifying games. If we can pass the ball when we get it and do ourselves justice as footballers when we then that's what we hope for."
Dunphy, however pointed out some of the qualities that the side do possess and is hopeful that Ireland's more experienced players can pass the ball.
"We know that the other side of the game, winning back possession, giving everything we've got, being efficient at set-pieces, which we are now. Richard Dunne, Shay Given and all of these people they are top, top players.
"I'd like to see Robbie Keane, John O'Shea, Damien Duff get on the ball, pass it and play a little bit."
The experienced pundit did concede that our system does work and is hopeful that Chelsea's performance against Barcelona a few short weeks ago can give our players hope of similar performances at this summer's tournament.
"It does, yeah. Spain struggle to score goals despite all the possession. They only won the World Cup late on with one goal. They lost to Switzerland 1-0. They tend to have a lot of possession and find it difficult to score. We saw the job that Chelsea did on Barcelona, with that sort of tight defence and hitting them on the break. So the game against Spain isn't a lost cause by any means."
