Just three of England's disastersFour and a half months ago, when Fabio Capello walked away from the England manager's job, ED felt that it was finally going to enjoy that most glorious and rare of things: a truly enjoyable football tournament.

Sadly, that will no longer be possible. Because now, ED has hope.

It had all looked so promisingly unpromising. When the FA replaced Capello with Roy Hodgson rather than Harry Redknapp, those hopes grew even more. It was as if a Hollywood studio had hired a BBC4 documentary director to make Top Gun 2: in search of excitement and entertainment, we were being offered solid research and

"Praise the Lord, the Germans have scored!"

Those words, uttered by Colin Murray on Five Live, summed up Germany's unlikely rise to the status of People's Champions at Euro 2012.

You could see where Murray was coming from. In last night's quarter-final, Greece delivered a first-half performance of such unremitting negativity that Roy's boys look like swaggering flair merchants in comparison.

So it came as some relief to see a positive, incisive Germany side break the deadlock. It represented a small victory of footballing good over evil, though ITV's Peter Drury obviously couched it in

Early Doors doesn't know if you have heard, but there is a little Euro 2012 quarter-final taking place on Sunday.

It's England v Italy, two of Europe's grandest teams (okay, one, despite Roy Hodgson's success in hauling this rather unconvincing team through the group stages) who go head-to-head in Kiev for the right to take on Germany or Greece in the semi-finals.

There are 46 players hoping to play, two coaches awaiting what could be one of the defining moments in their career, but everyone is just focused on one man: Mario Balotelli.

As soon as England defeated Ukraine to ensure their

Ronaldo celebrates in typically understated fashionAfter what felt like a very long Wednesday without football, Euro 2012 resumes this evening with the first quarter-final — Czech Republic-Portugal.

This evening's clash in Warsaw is perhaps the least appealing on paper, featuring as it does the only two sides in the last eight to reach the tournament via the play-offs. Still, after an entire day without any live football, kick-off in the Polish capital can't come soon enough.

Early Doors doesn't know what you did with your day off from the tournament, but for its part it spent most of it repeatedly watching Zlatan Ibrahimovic's exquisite

It pains Early Doors deeply to write the following words, but maybe Sir Dave Richards was right.

The ornamental fountain-botherer made a rather audacious claim earlier this week when saying Roy Hodgson has the "Midas touch", but following a 1-0 win over Ukraine that secured a quarter-final showdown with Italy it is becoming ever harder to argue the fact. Another largely leaden performance from England, yet the gold remains in sight.

Somehow, this fragile England team, which treats the ball with fear and is tarred by possession statistics that would leave Xavi nauseous and in need of a

If Navas really was Jesus he would have knelt down to head the ball over the lineWhen Luka Modric caressed the ball with the outside of his right boot, sending it spinning into the night air in Gdansk, and Ivan Rakitic leapt perfectly at the back post to meet it with a firm header, an overenthusiastic pyrotechnician with an itchy trigger finger in Kharkiv's fan zone set loose a stream of fireworks from the top of the jumbotron in Ploscha Svobody.

He hadn't counted on Iker Casillas. The Spain captain threw out his arms to produce a brilliant save to deny the Croatia midfielder a goal that, had La Furia Roja not responded to it, would have sent the world and European

They came dressed for a funeral, and that is exactly what they got. Though for a fleeting, frantic few minutes it appeared some life remained in Netherlands' Euro 2012 campaign, ultimately the demise of the team wearing their black change strip was confirmed at the hands of Portugal and a deadly Cristiano Ronaldo in a breathless contest in Kharkiv.

Netherlands supporters conducted another Oranje pilgrimage when snaking through town from the fan zone to the Metalist Stadium prior to kick-off in hope of a miracle, but a city the Dutch have made their home over the past week instead hosted a

Last night the world was in mortal danger. Such was the weight of jokes about Greece, the Euros and the Euro flying around, earth's tectonic plates began to fracture and tear. Happily, though, apocalypse was avoided when a new YouTube video of a cat committing an epic fail distracted sufficient numbers of people to spare humanity.

Early Doors jests, of course. And to be honest there was something rather neat in the fact that the country's success in reaching the quarter-finals came just before Greece holds elections on Sunday which could, if they swing towards the anti-austerity party, see