…. You wouldn’t have thought so, but she really does. You know, just putting that out there… Print this out and give it to your child to play spot the difference. It will confuse them!

So after a weekend of interesting tactical battles, the surprise exit of the Dutch *weep*, and the absolute inability of World Champions Italy to put one meaningful ball into the box, Europe has once again settled down to enjoy a well-needed two day break before the semi-finals begin in earnest. Two penalty shoot outs have occurred; David Villa seems a shoe-in for the Golden Boot (giggle) and there have been plenty of injuries, so much so that the Turks may have to field a third choice goalkeeper up front so says coach Faith Terim – but enough of this for now.

Today, we’ve decided to take a change of tack on our old ‘blog of the day’ – and feature a blog pretty much solely concerned with one of the big 4. Chelsea fans, this is for you! Disappointed with his team’s lads thus far in the tournament, only Ballack well…. I’ll let ‘Living True Blue’ take up the questions now. Oh, and make sure to check out his site, of which particular interest is the Chelsea Euro round up…

1.)Euro 2008 will be won by whom?
A.) Netherlands deserve to win it this time (Ed – these questions were answered pre Quarter Finals – sorry pal). They have all the right ingredients to win and only bad luck can cause their downfall in the knock-out stage. They have only conceded 2 goals in the qualifiers and just 1 goal in the group stage of the finals. They are playing the best football in the competition, using the width of the pitch and space while attacking and effectively reducing the space while the opponents have the ball. The Spaniards are playing well, but their defense is yet to be tested and I feel their defense is vulnerable. The best team doesn’t always win. That’s another way of saying the Italians still have (Ed had anyway) a chance.

2.) Which Chelsea player has impressed you most thus far during the tournament?
None so far. Ballack was good in the first and third game but was clueless against the Croats. He showed what material he is made of when he fired an excellent free-kick against Austria to take the Germans into the quarter-finals. Carvalho was solid and his team-mates Ferreira and Bosingwa had decent games, but did nothing spectacular. Makelele added to the lack of creativity in the French midfield and didn’t look to be in the greatest of form. Cech was good in the first two matches but made a big blunder against the Turks which cost them the quarterfinal berth. Clearly, Cech is not in his best form and some rest would do a world of good to him. Anelka and Malouda are not even worth mentioning.

3.) And have you spotted any players you hope Big Phil will be plucking out of obscurity for Stamford Bridge next season?
I don’t see someone obscure coming to the Bridge at all. With Big Phil having to choose from the likes of Deco and Ronnie who have worked under him before, chances are less that we might see some obscure face. I don’t want someone like Lampard or Drogba to leave The Bridge, but I feel those that come will certainly depend on who goes.

4.) Tom thinks that Ronaldo is the best thing since the dawn of footballing history. But is Carvalho more instrumental in providing the rock of the team.
Maybe Tom considers the dawn of football to be in the year 2000 (Ed Tom is indeed delusional). Ronaldo is the best thing that happened to United because he almost single-handedly won trophies for them this year, but he is nowhere near the ‘best thing since the dawn of footballing history’. He’s good against the Bolton’s and West Hams’ of the Premier League, but not as good against teams with better defenses. As for Portugal, Carvalho certainly is the rock in the defense ably assisted by Pepe, while Ronaldo creates the spark upfront. From a Portuguese point of view, both are equally needed for them to proceed further.

5.) Why should http://livingtrueblue.blogspot.com/ be at the top of every true blue’s blogroll?
‘Living True Blue’ should be on every true blue’s blogroll (not necessarily on top, I’ve seen better Chelsea blogs) because it brings all the latest Chelsea news, transfer talk, match previews and reviews as well as articles about football in general at times. So all the Blue fans who haven’t visited the place yet, take a look. Comments and suggestions are always welcome!

You heard the man – get over to Living True Blue and indulge! Congrats once again on being our blog of the day sir!

Well, it started out politely with applause for the national anthems, yet two hours later had descended into singing in the streets. How did this happen? I give you the magic forumla of football + alcohol = frenzied excitement. You can probably throw into that the drama of penalties - and penalty saves - and it gives you the result that I witnessed last night in the Les Halles area of Paris. Previously extremely demure young ladies became fervent fans the closer the game got to its denouement. Every corner was screamed for, every free kick given against their team booed. The Frog and Rosbif (Paris’s first and best English pub, according to the marketing) was rammed, and the crowd was split roughly 50:50. No hint of any animosity between the two sets of fans, but lots of light-hearted banter (as far as my limited knowledge of both languages goes) and singing. But eventually it was the Spanish contingent who spilled (poured themselves?) out into the dark streets to continue their revellry into the night. Here’s how happy they were just after the match:

Happy faces, waved flags, plenty of booze…the perfect fooballing evening

A victory for football… The Italians, despite being a side full of superbly talented individuals seemed to be playing all-out for a goalless full-time, and penalties, and did it ever come back to bite them - with Di Natale scuffing a weak fourth penalty into Casillas’ arms to hand the Semi-Final to Aragones and his lads. OK, so the football at the most part wasn’t pretty, but just take a look at David Silva and his heat-map (from the CPI) below as an example to see how hard the Spanish worked.

I was hoping for updates of screaming Italians and Spanish supporters live from ‘Gay Paris’ from our roving reporter Tom, but apparently someone spilt beer all over his laptop - and as such he has gone missing. Still, I imagine he is somewhere, leaping from fountain to bar with Spanish scarf around his head, considering a nationality change. Cracking excitement, despite the football - and here’s hoping for an exciting pair of Semi Finals.

Who’s going to win? I don’t know, but one thing is for sure… Don’t ask Luis Aragones!

I’m begging to be proven wrong in the second half - but as it stands, this tepid performance between two giants of the international scene has been one of the worst halves of football thus far in the tournament, with Spain playing some nice football and the Italians stifling the play all night. However, Toni has looked like he’s keen up the other end, and if Spain continue to press who knows what will happen.

“They’re the team who are trying to score the goals are Spain” I hear the northern tones of Alan Shearer ring in my ears… and it’s difficult to deny that the geordie favourite is right. Take a look at the statistics, taken from the CPI, below - shots 10:1 in favour of the Red Fury, and hark at the Azzurri who have had just 43% of possession over all.

The phingy label blog were all excited about this game…  How wrong they were - for now at least.

…from the Frog and Rosbif pub in the heart of lovely, sunny Paris.

We thought that we should bring a bit of European culture to our English pages, so we drew straws, and here I am in Paris, Meant to be live-blogging the France Quarter Final. As we all know, things didn’t quite go as expected for Les Bleus, so the Frog and Rosbif (Paris’s premier English pub) gets our custom this evening. Hopefully some Italians and Spaniards will wander in and make the place jump, but it’s already pretty lively.

Look for more in a bit, but fo now I’ll pass over to ‘Short Straw’ Jack.

The last of the quarter finals sees Italy, who scraped through to the Euro 2008 quarter-finals with just three goals, all of them arising from set-piece manoeuvres, take on Spain - the team who started so well in destroying Russia - but who perhaps haven’t looked quite so convincing ever since…

OK - so the ‘Red Fury’ rested a number of players in the 3rd game against tournament losers Greece and still maaged to snatch a last minute win, but one imagines that the World Champions are made of sterner stuff than they have displayed thus far, and it’s time fo pre-tournament hero Luca Toni to score isn’t it…? Surely..? Maybe..?

For you see, taking a look back at the statistics, it becomes clear that there is a curious sense of déjà vu after he suffered a similar fate in World Cup 2006. Then, as the table below (provided by the CPI) shows, he had scored more than 30 goals for Fiorentina, (the first man to break through that barrier in Serie A since the 1950s), yet failed to score in the group stages for the eventual World Champions. His two goals in WC2006 did come in the quarter-finals, however, so perhaps he will finally make his mark against Spain on Sunday evening.

Only time will tell - but my money is on Toni finally bagging one!