Hellas and Jimmy Jump

Greece defeats Portugal 1-0 in the Euro2004 finals and is the new football champion of Europe! Kudos, they really deserve it (although I strongly favor offensive instead of defensive football tactics)! Good team-play, excellent tactical discipline, very high efficiency, a strong will and yet very likeable modesty. And of course ‘König Otto’ Rehhagel, a clever and talented coach! What a nice “forward pass” for the upcoming Olympic games in Greece!

Embarrassing situation during the finals for the organizers of the Euro2004: A man known as Jimmy Jump managed to break the (obviously weak) security barrier and run onto the field. Imagine what could have happened if he wasn’t just out for harmless fifteen minutes of fame..

[Update 20040707: Those who came here searching for “Jimmy Jump”, “Jimmy Jump video” etc. etc.: See the comments below for some more information.. feel free to post other resources in the comments section too]

BTW I’d wish the Swiss football team had some lessons in Greece ;) For the future, particularly with regard to the World Cup 2006 in Germany and the Euro2008 in Switzerland and Austria, I hope the amateurish top-management of SFV will be forced to resign soon, and Christian Gross be nominated as the new coach to replace Köbi Kuhn (the first will eventually, the latter probably not happen – unfortunately). Roger Federer, who successfully defended last year’s victory in Wimbledon today, did a much better job than “unsere Nati” :)

20 Replies to “Hellas and Jimmy Jump”

  1. Offensive/Defensive what’s the difference?
    The gist is to be the one to win at the end !

    …and, yeah, I’m Greek and proud of it !
    Greece rocks !!!

  2. vina, i just like brazilian football style with tons of goals :) but you’re right in that “modern football tactics is the tactics that wins”, as otto rehhagel put it. obviously, greece had the right tactics to win the championship and can really be proud of its excellent performance! :)

    btw. and yes, greece rocks indeed! i’ve been there at least three times and i always liked it :) (i also liked portugal, though ;)

  3. Dont get upset greek boy, you won yeh, and its cool, but for peeps watching its gotta be good, and peeps got opinons………….dick

  4. Hey does anyone know where I can find a video of when he jumped into the field?
    I watched it live but I want to watch it again it was soooooooo hilarious!!

  5. @aaron: i’d be interested too, let me know if you find it :) i guess jimmy will upload a video to his site as soon as he has the opportunity (maybe he’s currently at the police station again, who knows?)

    some video stills/pics are here:

    http://www.world-of-smilies.de/jimmyjump/
    http://www.blick.ch/PB2G/PB2GA/pb2ga.htm?snr=73259
    http://www.winhilfe.ch/wbb2/thread12113.html

    well, you probably knew this already :)

    btw. why are there so many comments and pageviews on my posting all of a sudden? :) is it just because of this page ranking #4 on google for the search term “jimmy jump”? or is there a direct link somewhere? it’s so weird :))

  6. Check this URL : http://postmortem.csd.auth.gr/~gpall/hiddirs/Ethn-Ell/ I don’t know how much badwith they have, so download what you like more first. As for the “defensive” football, may i remind everybody that Greece scored against all opponents, including the Russian team, the only match we lost. I don’t believe that we had to ask Pauleta to tell us in what way he preffered as to play. If they were as good players as they claim, somebody whould have found a way to score, at least for once, in those 285 last minutes of those last 3 matches.

  7. @konstantinos: thanks for the link! hilarious video :)

    apparently (according to my web stats), hundreds of people came here searching for “jimmy jump”, so i’m mirroring the video locally in case the aforementioned original server goes offline: trelamenos-apo-mpartsa.mpg (3.7 mb). (please be kind to my server, i’ve only 400 kbps upstream bandwidth ;)

    @gpall, if you read this: i hope that’s ok. if not, just notify me (by e-mail to mettlerd at numlock dot ch, so i can be sure it’s you ;)

  8. If a fan doesn’t like the way Greece played I can understand it. What I can’t understand is coaches like Olsen saying that Greece set football 30 years back. What does the ultra-modern defense of Greece has to do with the defensive systems of the 70s ? Our keeper, Nikopolidis, wasn’t even the hero of any match. Greece had very few fouls, check for example the match with the Czechs. Kapsis eliminated Koller without a single foul throughout the game. And we had the same number of shots on target as the Czechs did. And contrary to any other team, there was not a single irreplaceable player in the Greek squad.

    Morten Olsen should be thankful to Rehaggel for giving away these free lessons. But instead he just showed us how ignorant a national coach can be.

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