Now it's time for the story about Northern Ireland in Euro 2016. As you remember I managed to overtake Denmark in qualification group and win very rival playoff against Ireland. If you want to read the post about it follow this link:

http://www.truefootballmanager.com/2010/09/northern-ireland-breaks-through-to-euro.html

Talks before Euro 2016

There were a lot of talks before European championship. Northern Ireland has been considered the weakest team by bookmakers:

My team's captain Chris Baird warned football community to not be so sure that Northern Ireland is not able to compete at the tournament:

I didn't want to agree but unfortunately these talks proved to be correct in the end…

Group matches

Ukraine – Northern Ireland

The first game was against my native Ukraine. They had an absolute advantage during the whole match letting Martin Paterson to shoot once during the last minutes. It turned into a beautiful goal in an upper corner. I felt lucky myself after that.

Northern Ireland - Russia

Strong Russian team ceased on keeper's mistake scoring that only goal. My guys showed better performance than in the first match but poor goalkeeper (there are no good goalies in Northern Ireland in 2016) destroyed all our hopes on a draw.

Czech Republic – Northern Ireland

We had chances to pass through to the next round. Therefore I was intending to struggle against the most powerful team in the group as much as possible. High closing down and hard tackling allowed us to hope on a draw at least. But then Czech class beat Irish order. We were not able to make Peter Cech conceding a goal.

Euro 2016 results

Of course Northern Irish Football Association is satisfied by the result. Seems like they didn't expect a miracle from us. Actually if my team passed to quarterfinals it would be a real miracle because Russia, Ukraine and Czech Republic had much stronger squads than Northern Ireland.

Euro 2016 Champion

France won Euro 2016 in a very confident way.

They were truly fantastic! Just look at these victories:

Two best goal scorers among French guys, both regens (Andreani is Tottenham player now):

Most quantity of assists made by Flamini and Achour:

The best player of the tournament was Ramzi Achour:

Ramzi Achour

I started to want to buy this guy!!! And it seems quite possible to do this because Achour is Bordeaux player at the moment.

True Football Manager