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Germany cruised to victory over a valiant if limited Greece team. Philipp Lahm, Germany’s captain, led the way with a swerving strike five minutes before half time. Georgios Samaras equalised for Greece early in the second half, but goals from Sami Khedira, Miroslav Klose and Marco Reus put the three time European Champions into the ascendency. A late Dimitris Salpigidis penalty could not hide how badly the Greeks were outplayed.

The strength of the German squad was illustrated as Jogi Loew made three surprising changes, switching his front three of Podolski, Muller and Gomez for Dortmund’s Marco Reus, Bayer Leverkusen’s Andre Schurrle, and Lazio’s Miroslav Klose. Jerome Boateng returned from suspension, in place of Lars Bender, as Germany dominated from the first minute to the last.

Greece replaced suspended captain Giorgis Karagounis with Grigoris Makos, and winger Sotiris Nins was preferred to Fanis Gekas, and save...

International football can throw up all kinds of non-sporting narratives, from Jesse Owens winning gold at Hitler’s Olympics, Argentina winning the World Cup with the background of the Junta and it’s oppression of the people, USA vs Iran in France ’98, and of course the various rivalries formed off the back of armed conflict – the historical context surrounding England vs Germany or Argentina will be known by most, but this European Championship also brought Poland and Russia together in a tense battle. Germany vs Greece and the economic differences between the two countries is a more present source of friction that normally expected, and it adds an interesting subtext to the match.

Germany won all three group games and apart from a sluggish performance against Portugal in the opening match they have yet to break a sweat. From back to front they look strong, inhabiting typical German efficiency and technical excellence.

The first of the second round of Euro 2012 games kicks off at 5pm this afternoon (UK time) when 2004 tournament winners Greece take on Czech Republic at the Municipal Stadium in Wroclaw. In the opening round of the tournament, Greece picked up a credible draw against Poland and the Czech Republic suffered a humiliating 4-1 defeat at the hands of Russia and must produce a result today to stay in the tournament.

Here’s the team news ahead of today’s game which will be shown live on ITV 1.

Greece are short of defenders for today’s game with Sokratis Papastathopoulos suspended for his red card on Friday and a cruciate ligament injury ruling out Avraam Papadopoulos ruled out after tearing his cruciate ligament.

Greece national team coach Fernando Santos will likely start Kyriakos Papadopoulos alongside Kostas Katsouranis at the back.

For the Czech Republic, several changes are expected after last week’s crushing defeat.

Director: João Pedro Rodrigues Writers: João Pedro Rodrigues, Rui Catalão, João Rui Guerra da Mata Starring: Fernando Santos, Alexander David, Chandra Malatitch, Cindy Scrash Masks and makeup are often used to disguise one's true self and in Portuguese director João Pedro Rodrigues' (The Phantom, Two Drifters) To Die Like A Man, some characters desire to be someone different while others want to hide from reality. Rodrigues' narrative revolves around the existential quagmire in which a pre-operative transsexual named Tonia (Fernando Santos) is hopelessly stuck. When Tonia is told by a doctor, “nothing is discarded, everything is turned into something else,” we know this dialog is referring to much more than the origami-like process of re-purposing Tonia's penis into a vagina. How can anything in To Die Like A Man be taken at face value when the characters' faces [and genders] are blurred and/or transformed? Tonia is an aging Lisbon drag...

Studio: Strand | Director: João Pedro Rodrigues | Cast: Fernando Santos, Alexander David , Ivo Barroso, Miguel Loureiro, Chanda Malatitch

Release Date: 8/23/2011 | Price: DVD $24.99

Bonuses: none

Specs: Nr | 134 min. | Foreign-language melodrama | 1.33:1 widescreen | Dolby Digital 5.1 | Portuguese with English subtitles

Ratings (out of 5): Movie | Audio | Video | Overall

Fernando Santos is Tonia in To Die Like a Man.

Portuguese film To Die Like a Man, which is set in Lisbon’s transgender subculture, is a melodrama with surreal overtones.

The movie follows Tonia (Fernando Santos), an iconic drag cabaret performer, who has had breast implants but held off final surgery to become a woman despite the wishes of her younger drug-addicted lover Rosario (Alexander David). Tonia is motivated by devout Catholicism and fear that the surgery will compromise her drag status. Then, a son Tonia fathered years earlier re-enters her life after going Awol from the army having killed another soldier.

To escape the...

Release Date: Aug. 23, 2011

Price: DVD $24.99

Studio: Strand Releasing

Fernando Santos is Tonia in To Die Like a Man.

A 2009 France-Portugal co-production, the film To Die Like a Man is a fantasy-musical-drama mash-up by Portuguese writer/director João Pedro Rodrigues (O Fantasma, Two Drifters), who’s known for movies that deal with explicit, gay-themed subjects.

To Die Like a Man tells the tale of Tonia (Fernando Santos), a larger-than-life drag icon in late 1980s Lisbon, who meets and falls in love with Rosario (Alexander David), a young soldier who has gone Awol.

Under pressure from Rosario, Tonia begins a series of operations to become a woman, but the final step proves much harder than she could have guessed. Torn between her love for Rosario and her deeply rooted religious convictions, Tonia looks for a pleasant distraction via a trip to the countryside with Rosario. But when they get lost along the way,...

We can’t blame you for feeling a bit nostalgic this weekend. With the horrendous update of 1981’s mediocre Arthur (featuring a rather annoying Russell Brand) and the Krull inspired Your Highness coming out, you’d think we were rocking Body Glove and shoulder pads again. But all's not lost my feathered-haired friend. Feminists everywhere can rejoice that Hanna's Saoirse Ronan proves that girl power is more about kicking ass than shaking it (hear that Zack). Ceremony shows great promise from its director and is a must for Wes Anderson fans. Fernando Santos gives Tootsie a run for her/his money in the item To Die Like a Man. Venice/Tiff/Nyff Meek's Cutoff turns Manifest Destiny on its collective head in Kelly Reichardt's third film starring Michelle Williams. U.S Indie Ceremony - Max Winkler - Magnolia The Bride Wore Out. Again we find Uma donning a...

João Pedro Rodrigues’ slow, meditative To Die Like A Man features several scenes where people walk idly through the woods or the park, partially obscured by the flora as they talk about special plants that have been grown in labs, and whether there’s a natural way that men and women should behave. Nature is an especially important subject for the movie’s heroine, Fernando Santos, a pre-operative transsexual who’s the main attraction at a Lisbon drag club. She’s been consulting with a doctor about having her penis refashioned into a vagina. (“Nothing is discarded,” the doctor ...

"In its quest to reconcile the life of imagination and primal desire with the physical realities that close in around us, [João Pedro] Rodrigues's cinema sets his characters off sniffing, licking, and rubbing up against this implacable world in hopes it will respond," writes Andrew Chan in Reverse Shot. "In To Die Like a Man, it does. Despite its fair share of dreary, seedy interiors, this story of a Lisbon drag icon named Tonia (Fernando Santos) is a retreat into the natural world and, briefly, into the cosmos.... With echoes of Jacques Nolot's Before I Forget, the film is also a tough portrait of aging queer, of the trials of living in a body torn between persistent desires and a growing rejection of itself. Where Rodrigues's earlier works are built around urgent expressions of youthful, hormonal lust, To Die Like a Man questions what desire means for someone preparing to leave his body - and,...