After last Wednesday home defeat against Croatia; it is now a fact the European Championship 2008 in Switzerland and Austria will be carried out without the English football motherland. Croatia won by 2:3; goals by Niko Krancjar (9th minute) as well as by the national league professionals Ivica Olic (14th) and Mladen Petric (77th). The fans who shared the thrill with England in the Wembley Stadium were visibly disappointed about the lousy performance of the English national team and Coach Steve McClaren. Superstar David Beckham as well could barely believe the practically unimaginable happening. "This was disastrous for the whole country“, was his comment in regards to the loss.

The team won a total of twelve games, lost three and tied two games. The team accumulated 23 points, just one point less than the surprising second place Russia. Since only the first two in each group can qualify for the European Championship; England will have to stay home next year. Due to Croatia’s victory it was possible for Russia, that also achieved a victory against Andorra to reach the second place. If England would have won they would be in advantage by the points.

After the unexpected disappointing; England‘s Coach McClaren will be dismissed immediately. He took the place of the national coach after the World Cup 2006 when the former coach Sven-Göran Eriksson from Sweden left the team after the publication of confidential utterances.

For only a short period of 15 months there hasn’t been anyone else coaching the national team for such a short time. Throughout the qualification rounds and by making big mistakes such missing penalties England achieved the image of the EURO-2008-Loser. With this image the players Beckham, Gerrard and Co. will probably have to deal with for a long time. "This was the worst evening for the national team. It will keep hurting for quite a while", complained Steven Gerrard.

The last games of the qualification round have already taken place so all 16 participants for the 13th European Championship 2008 already stand firm. Already qualified are: Germany, France, Greece, Italy, Croatia, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Spain and Turkey. Since Austria and Switzerland are the event hosts these two teams are automatically qualified.

In group D the Czech Republic could achieve the first place. The German team which finished their last group match against Wales with an unsatisfied 0:0 kept the second place. Thereby; they also have an advantage, they will not end up in the feared lottery pot of the raffle for the preliminaries. There are always the hosts, the title holder, “Greece", and the team with the year’s best coefficient, the Netherlands.