Your Complete Guide to Euro 2008: The Sorcerer Beats The Apprentice

The Sorcerer, Gus Hiddink put the Apprentice, Macro Van Basten to the sword last night as the 'unfancied' Russians beat the Dutch 3-1 after extra-time to reach the semi-finals of Euro 2008.

It is quite a remarkable acheivement. Remember Russia were firmly slaughtered 4-1 by Spain in their first group game.

What is it with Hiddink and International competition? Remember he took South Korea to the World Cup semi-finals in 2002 and got Australia to the World Cup finals!!

Russia will now play either Spain or Italy in the 2nd semi-final, next Thursday.

In the space of a couple of days the competition has lost two of its favourites - Croatia and Holland.

Spain and Italy play tonight in the last quarter-final, kick off 20.45 (local time).

FORZA ITALIA

FORZA ITALIA

FORZA ITALIA

A Tale of Two Nigerians

ODEJAYI VILLIAN

KANU HERO

Two Nigerian footballers plying their trade for Portsmouth and Barnsley respectively have 'stole' the FA Cup headlines this weekend when both FA Cup semi-final finals (sponsored by E.ON) were played at the 'new' Wembley for the very first-time.

Firstly Portsmouth's Kanu scored the only goal in their win against WBA on Saturday, controversary again that there was a handball in the build-up to the goal.

Secondly in today's semi-final the hero of Barnsley's battling quarter-final 1-0 win over Chelsea Kayode Odejayi, squandered a clear-cut chance when on a breakway and on his own, with only Cardiff's Enckleman to beat, beat Enckleman but also beat Enckleman's left-hand post.

How he missed only Odejayi knows and no wonder Barnsley's manager Simon Davey got the 'shrinks' in during the week to sort out Odejayi's head. Its obvious they didn't do a very good job!!!

So without extra-time and without penalties, both cup-ties were settled inside 90 mins by the same score, 1-0 and we now know that Portsmouth will take on Cardiff City at Wembley on Saturday 17th May 2008.

I wrote earlier about the Wembley 'corporates' bothering to turn up to both semi-final games - and they did in style. Saturday's game attracted a crowd of over 83,000 and todays crowd was just under 83,000.

So well done!

So now both Portsmouth and Cardiff fans will have to do battle to get those priceless FA CUP Final tickets when last year's finallists Chelsea and Man Utd only received 25,000 each!!