There won’t be a Europop match today as I forgot to upload the tracks last night - sorry: GER v CRO tomorrow. There will be a BIG POLL later today on FT to ‘make up for it’ though.

portugal is Proper Indie, no denying it, getting bits of b&s as well as the boos (and a bit of syd maybe too?) and given that these are two of my, like, favourite bands ever should be straight forward, but the czechs do have a charm.

good silky skills from both teams, first match i’d definitely call a draw, but as that’s not an option, i think the portuguese sneak it following that autotune own goal…

This may take a few listens to decide.

http://www.1pixelout.net/code/audio-player-wordpress-plugin/#chipmunk

“multiple of 11.025 kHz”

So we all know by now that the Portuguese manager took over a Czech team in disarray during the Pop World Cup and led them to glory. Portuguese fans had been hoping he’d do the same to them, only to find out their team were doing just fine anyway thank you. Meanwhile Czech fans were in despair after their comedy indie tactics backfired spectacularly and left them managerless after one game. Surely there was no Special One waiting in the wings to save them this time?

Actually, there might be. It’s how you perform against the top managers that really counts, and we may well be witnessing the baton of Special One passing from one to another here. The Portuguese track would have beaten most others in the tournament for me, touching and summery at the same time - a British team could never pull this off, they’d drench it in mimsiness or give it a clumsy jaunty backbone, but the Portuguese players get exactly the right weighting on every ball.

However the Czechs are playing the game of their life, outdoing the French team at their own game and producing the pop song of the tournament in the process. It’s a competitive game at all times but the Czech class wins out.

Of course the Turkish management maintains that any tactical voting is completely against their HIGH MORAL VALUES. They’ve been reading Jane Eyre, you know. There’s a mad woman in the attic setting fire to stuff!

“About Harmony” is gentle and sad, then gentle and playful, then the guy goes off-tune irritatingly - and he never had too much going for his singing anyway - but the song form is far more interesting than “Strip Twists” straight-up genre exercise. In fact, following the various forms around gives this interest.

[Btw, during my one tiny exploration of the Czech charts, at the instigation of Mr. Umlauts a couple of years ago, I found them teeming with Prog Rock, resembling today's Portuguese team more than its Czech team.]

In the second half Portugal certainly looked tired. Without that extra speed they couldn’t stand up to the Czechs, who stuck to their guns and played a fluid little game.

A resounding victory for the Czech Republic in the end, but surely it’s not enough to save their tournament?

so yes it’s about 10% too fast if you play it in-line. sorry about that. for files like that we can only disable the in-line player, but that seems like too much of a disadvantage.

tom, you may need to make this stipulation on the supply of mp3s :-/

I think I’m going for the Czechs, but I’m not sure they’ll be able to get the win they need - we will see though!