Man Underperforms But Keeps Job (Part 2)

Vaya con Dios, Diego Maradona: despite getting further than England but scoring fewer goals against Germany than England did, El Diego is now looking for another job. Presumably Ronald Reagan, Tony Blair, Margaret Thatcher, George Bush and FIFA mafiosi were to blame, not shoddy defending or inability/unwillingness by his strikers to track back.

The current coaches of Cuba and Venezuela are Raul Gonzalez Triana and Cesar Farias respectively. Just sayin’

Not nearly as harsh as what happened to the North Korean team though…and Fab goes marching on.

The Ultimate Underdogs?

We’ll definitely be keeping our eyes on this. Best of luck to Hekari United.

In other news…all 23 players that comprised the French squad that went to the World Cup have been suspended for their game against Norway on August 11th. It’ll be interesting to see how many of our squad play against Hungary on the same day; at least the FFF seem to be taking their abject failure seriously.

It’s The Capello Index!

It’s here! ESPN Soccernet has the England team ratings here if you really feel you must see them.

It’s a bit bonkers though – Diego Forlan was born in Uruguay, but apparently his nationality is Spanish – and apparently we took Barry Gareth to South Africa rather than Gareth Barry and there’s no ‘ball given away in midfield’ stats for him. Wayne Rooney also somehow got a higher rating than Cristiano Ronaldo – who actually scored a goal in the finals.

Congratulations To Spain

The best team won. If anyone wants to maintain that the Premiership is better than La Liga then please post your incredibly convincing arguments using the ‘Share Your Thoughts’ link.

Brazil 2014: South American winner, 50% chance of a European finalist, a final with lots of goals with the first one coming before half time. Don’t say we didn’t warn you…

We’ll know if we get 2018 on 2nd December. But apart from our comprehensive ‘what went wrong’ article (which is still being written), the 2010 World Cup is now in the books; at least we won’t have to listen to those bloody Vuvuzelas anymore.

Before We All Get Carried Away…

…about how we’re going to win the World Cup in Brazil in 2014, here are some stats to consider:

* Howard Webb is English and he’s a policeman. From Rotherham.

* There have been seven World Cup tournaments held in North, Central and South America. All seven have been won by teams from South America – but  worryingly for Brazil, the hosts have won only two of them (Uruguay in 1930, Argentina in 1978)

* Howard Webb is will be 43 in 2014, so he probably won’t be refereeing in Brazil.

* England have never got past the quarter finals in the four ‘American’ tournaments we qualified for. Our best performance in South America was the quarter finals in Chile in 1962, which was the last time we played in a South American World Cup. The last World Cup game we played in North, Central or South America was the ‘Hand Of God’ game…which is a almost a quarter of a century ago anyway!

* Howard Webb is from Rotherham, which is nearly 6000 miles from Johannesburg. It’ll probably be warmer in Rotherham today…but let’s see how Howard Webb (the English referee who’s a policeman from Rotherham) handles the heat of the World Cup final! We’ll be back after an annoying Hyundai advert about cars playing football.

Not sure who’s going to win tonight, but Holland’s price is probably far too big – however, the stat I like is that the country which eliminates Germany from the competition is far more likely to win it than the one that eliminates Brazil; it should probably be Spain in that case, but there have been a couple of times when Brazil were knocked out by countries that went on to win for the first time – Argentina in 1978 and France in 1998 – but both of them were hosts, which seems to count against Holland.

Let’s just hope the game is a good one. Unlike any of ours.

Update: my wife has just berated me for not knowing that Howard Webb’s wife is called Kay. Good job the BBC made up for this omission.

Howard Webb Gets The Final

Breaking story from Sky News: Howard Webb will be the referee in the World Cup Final. Thoroughly deserves it as far as I’m concerned; the only drawback will be that certain commentators will feel the need to mention the fact that he’s British every thirty seconds or so.

Man Underperforms But Keeps Job (Part 1)

The only real alternative was Roy Hodgson, who…ummm… got ‘lucky’ when he was appointed Liverpool manager yesterday. Despite dropping hints here, there and everywhere while working as a media pundit during the World Cup, Harry Redknapp isn’t the right person for the job at all - let’s see how he gets on in the Champions League before going in that direction. So Fab continues as England manager, probably because he’s too expensive to get rid of. I believe the expression is ‘Golden Handcuffs’.

We’ve got three Euro 2012 qualifiers before the middle of October: Bulgaria at home on September 3rd, Switzerland away the following Tuesday and then Montenegro at home on October 12th. The first of those games comes three games into the Premiership season; the friendly against Hungary is three days before the Premiership kicks off, so the week following the Community Shield between Man U and Chelsea. So it’s anyone’s guess who is going to be in the squad for that game. I’d volunteer but it’s my mum’s birthday the week before, I’m far too old and I’m also eligible for another international team from the British Isles I want to keep my options open

Last thing today: Jerry and I had discussed who we’d like to win the World Cup. Needless to say – and I’m writing this just after the second half of Ghana v Uruguay has begun – my choice is already out. Jerry’s choice is still in the competition, but I’m only going to tell you who he likes if they win. Unless he wants to tell you himself of course…

New Flavour From Walkers

Leaves something of a bitter aftertaste…feel free to circulate but please leave the site address on the graphic if you do.

Germany 4, England 1

That’s it for the 2010 World Cup. Next game: Hungary at Wembley in mid-August. Thanks for reading, we’ll have more reaction when we’ve calmed down a bit.

Don’t Mention The Euro

The 1966 final has cast a shadow over past five or so decades: in some ways it’s difficult for those of us that do not have our own memories of the game to really believe it happened and that we actually beat the Germans, despite being witnessess to the win in Belgium in the European Championship and the simply astonishing 5-1 win in September 2001.

Playing the Germans in tournament football always seems to signify the end of an era. The 3-2 quarter final defeat in 1970 – after leading 2-0 – ended England’s reign as World Champions: just over two years later a 3-1 home defeat in the European Championships was the beginning of the end for Alf Ramsey: it was another eight years until we qualified for the final stages of a major international tournament. In 1982 two of the best players we had in the 1970s – Kevin Keegan and Trevor Brooking- made their only appearances in the World Cup in a 0-0 draw that knocked us out of that tournament, Keegan famously missing a late header. A similar story with the 1990 semi final: no-one would have predicted that game would have been Paul Gascoigne’s last game in the World Cup. Even when we hosted the European Championships in 1996, the Germans beat us. Last game at Wembley: Germany won.

So before this afternoon’s game, let’s not forget that our record against them since an Alan Shearer goal beat them in Euro 2000 is three wins and two defeats. And that they have never beaten us in a tournament game over 90 minutes in neutral territory.

There’s every reason to be confident of an England win within the context of what’s already happened in this tournament. The draw with the USA was dire, but the USA won the group and only crashed out to Ghana last night in extra time. The Algeria game was terrible and looking back on it that result cost us the group rather than Landon Donovan’s late goal against the Algerians; we’re in the ‘difficult’ half of the draw because we deserve to be. The Slovenia game was a must win and England woke up and started to play something like tournament football.

We’ve not had anyone sent of yet (don’t worry, there’s plenty of time for that), we’ve not had the opportunity to thrash a poor team with ten men and we’ve not lost a game to the team that eventually finished bottom of our group have we? We also have an Italian coach: if you’re wondering why that’s significant, look at Italy’s record against Germany in the World Cup Finals. The Germans have never beaten the Italians and that includes two semi finals and a final. They won’t beat them again this year either!

A couple of weeks ago, Fabio Capello was being ridiculed everywhere; tomorrow, the red tops might be demanding an honorary knighthood. But remember that if we win, there’s a good chance we’ll be playing Argentina. A bit like beating the Cybermen in order to face the Daleks.

Here’s the team.

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