A provisional answer to the question "how far can an average team go on luck?" has been provided by Greece, in Euro 2004. As far as the Final. It remains to be seen if their luck will hold on Sunday.

Greece's offence thoughout the tournament has consisted of crosses, crosses and more crosses, most of them from low-probability positions. However, you send over 40 crosses in a match and maybe you'll get lucky once, which is what happened to Greece - right on the stroke of the 15 minute mark of extra-time. (This exaggerates only slightly. Greece have scored only 6 goals, the last two from crosses. One was a penalty conceded recklessly by Ronaldo and another was a long range shot that crept in because of a goalkeeper error.) Of course, this only works if the other team doesn't score. Despite creating at least four high-probability chances the Czechs were out of luck. The roll of the dice works at that end, too.

The Greeks are thoroughly competent pros and hard-working to boot. But so are England, Denmark and many others, including Russia, who beat Greece on a day when the dice didn't run their way. The Greek keeper is the only one in the tournament who appears to be able to handle the ball cleanly, so he's an edge.

Portugal are a much better team, with a fading superstar Figo, a rising potential superstar, Ronaldo and more general ability than Greece. They should win the Final. Even more so that they lost to Greece in the round-robin.

Two other notes. One, I note that the beeb, predictably harps on about the goalscorer "losing his marker". I refer the reader to earlier posts on this but add that this also misunderstands the technique of marking at soccer. The basic rule is you don't let your mark get behind you - i.e. closer to the goal. This is a sound rule but there are going to be occasions when your mark gets to the ball first and scores. It's bound to happen - but not often, and, crucially, far less than if you let the mark get "goalside" of you. That's what happened. No one lost his mark. It was a combination of luck and - give Dellas credit - a piece of skill with the head.

Which brings me to the observation that Koller, despite his size, is a poor header of the ball. He's quite a paradox. He is skilful with his feet, which is amazing. Yet he wins very few clean balls in the air and does very little with it when he wins one. And I'm not using as a yardstick great headers of the ball - like Andy Lockhead, Derek Dougan, Wyn Davies, etc. - but just average solid pros, like almost all of Koller's opponents today.