Spain vs Croatia and Italy vs Ireland, Euro 2012: Open Thread

Spain vs Croatia: 2:45pm ET
Italy vs Ireland: 2:45pm ET
TV schedule

Get our your calculators. You may need them later to figure out who will advance from this group. The easy path will be for Spain and Italy to win, sending both nations through to the quarter-finals. Where it gets complicated is if there is a draw in the Spain-Croatia match. I’m not going to go into all of the possibilities, but suffice to say, it should get quite interesting if Spain isn’t winning their game.

Here are the teams for today:

Spain team: Casillas; Arbeloa, Pique, Ramos, Alba; Busquets, Alonso, Xavi, Silva, Iniesta; Torres

Croatia team: Pletikosa; Vida, Corluka, Schildenfeld, Strinic; Vukojevic, Pranjic; Srna, Modric, Rakitic; Mandzukic.

Italy team: Buffon; Abate, Barzagli, Chiellini, Balzaretti; De Rossi, Pirlo, Marchisio; Motta; Cassano, Di Natale

Ireland team: Given; O’Shea, St Ledger, Dunne, Ward; McGeady, Whelan, Andrews, Duff; Doyle, Keane

Before, during or after today’s matches, join in the conversation by posting your rants, raves, questions and observations in the comments section below.