The Sun Shines Over Thrace…

Before moving on to our opponents in Friday night’s game, there are a couple of England stories to mention: Peter Crouch is out of the squad with a back injury and League 2 side Shrewsbury Town will receive a £500,000 windfall ‘if’ Joe Hart plays in goal tomorrow night: not bad at all for a team that had an average attendance last season of about 5500 – that’s about £90 per punter at the Greenhous Meadow Stadium.

So onto Bulgaria. They’ve not qualified for a major tournament since Euro 2004 but having said that, they’ve actually done as well as we have in the World Cup over the last quarter of a century, finishing fourth in the ’94 World Cup in the USA.

Before that, their most successful international era was when they qualified for four straight World Cups (1962-1974) and they’ve had their fair share of decent international players; striker Georgi Asparuhov was the nearest thing they had to George Best in the 60s and at one point Benfica wanted to buy him but the Communist government wouldn’t let him leave Bulgaria. Like George Best, he died far too early: in June 1971 he was killed in a car crash aged 28.

Other Bulgarian players to have achieved international recognition are Hristo Bonev, the shy and retiring Hristo Stoichkov and most recently Dimitar Berbatov, who has now retired from international football so he can spend his weekends disinterestedly wandering around opposition penalty areas for Manchester United. Oh and the bloke who looks like a werewolf and that goalie who was bald when he was in the World Cup but had ‘hair’ when he joined Reading. And if Spartacus was alive now and was any good at football, he’d probably be playing for Bulgaria.

Like a lot of the teams from Eastern Europe that we’ve played recently, the most capped player and leading goalscorer for the Lions is a name that will be familiar – Martin Petrov of Bolton Wanderers and captain Stiliyan Petrov will be well known to Celtic and Aston Villa fans. It also shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that only one of the current squad plays his club football at home (Veselin Minev of Lokomotiv Sofia); most of the rest are spread around the world – Berbatov’s natural replacement and former Manchester City striker Valeri Bojinov now plays in Serie A for Parma.

Whilst researching this piece I was a bit surprised to find out that we’ve only actually played them four times at home since 1968: they’ve never beaten us (either home or away) and have only scored once in their games at Wembley – not surprisingly, the scorer was Asparuhov and it wasn’t a bad goal either:

Not sure who the defender he beat was; Geoff Hurst equalised four minutes later and the game finished 1-1.

Back To Business

OK, two proper games coming up – unusually, our opening game with Bulgaria is being played on a Friday night, presumably because the England squad don’t want to miss MK Dons v Hartlepool in League 1 on Saturday lunchtime. Let’s start with the squad:

Goalkeepers: Scott Carson (West Brom), Ben Foster (Birmingham), Joe Hart (Manchester City).

Defenders: Gary Cahill (Bolton), Ashley Cole (Chelsea), Michael Dawson (Tottenham), Kieran Gibbs (Arsenal), Phil Jagielka (Everton), Glen Johnson (Liverpool), Joleon Lescott (Manchester City), Matthew Upson (West Ham)

Midfielders: Gareth Barry (Manchester City), Michael Carrick (Manchester United), Steven Gerrard (Liverpool), Adam Johnson (Manchester City), James Milner (Manchester City), Theo Walcott (Arsenal), Shaun Wright-Phillips (Manchester City), Ashley Young (Aston Villa)

Forwards: Darren Bent (Sunderland), Carlton Cole (West Ham), Peter Crouch (Tottenham), Jermain Defoe (Tottenham), Wayne Rooney (Manchester United).

* The goalkeeper situation for the next decade is basically Joe Hart and anyone who’s ever played goalkeeper before. Fab’s sudden realisation that Hart is the best keeper we’ve got is arguably six months too late and is a tacit admission that he made a mistake with his choices at the the World Cup. I’ll be amazed if either David James or Robert Green ever play for England again: Joe Hart could end up rivalling Peter Shilton in terms of talent and longevity.

* 16 players made the provisional 30 strong squad that was named before the World Cup; Darren Bent, Adam Johnson and Theo Walcott are back in contention after having missed the cut for the final 23 for South Africa. Personally I thought that either Johnson or Walcott should have gone to the World Cup and that Darren Bent didn’t really get a realistic chance to impress in the friendly against Japan – in retrospect, a game where the alarm bells really should have started ringing very loudly indeed.

* Of the players that didn’t decide to either retire or declare their permanent ineligibility after the World Cup, Joe Cole, Robert Green, Ledley King and Steven Warnock were all in the final World Cup squad but are missing this time. John Terry, Frank Lampard, Rio Ferdinand (again) and Bobby Zamora are all missing for injury reasons, although rumours that Lampard is having psychological treatment aimed at persuading him never to take a penalty again are unfounded. Cole (J) is going to find it hard going to get back into the squad – his decision to move to a Liverpool team that already looks even more lacklustre than last season may have an adverse affect on his England chances.

* Why is anyone from West Ham still involved in the England team? Bottom of the Premiership already having scored one goal in three games and with a goal difference of -9. If Matt Upson and Carlton Cole were truly international standard players then they would have at least been linked to moves to Manchester City. The Hammers are worse than Wigan right now; perhaps Fab should give Chris Kirkland and Victor Moses a look before he announces the next squad.

Our record at home against Bulgaria is OK: they’ve never beaten us (home or away) but in our four games with them at Wembley we’ve won two. Our last win came in March 1996 – when Les Ferdinand scored the only goal – but the last time we played them competitively was in a 0-0 draw in October 1998 in a Euro 2000 qualifer.

I’ll take a look at Bulgaria later in the week but for those of you that can’t wait to find out some interesting facts about them, neither that bloke who looks like a werewolf or Dimitar Berbatov play for them any longer.

That bloke who looks like a werewolf.

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Are You Hungary For More?

Excuse the inevitable pun…the good news is that we’re still pretty formidable at home: nine straight wins, unbeaten since that game against Croatia in November 2007 and playing a country that hasn’t beaten us since the 1962 World Cup and hasn’t beaten us in England since that game in November 1953.

The bad news? This is a game we should win. Just like the game against Algeria during the World Cup, although to be fair to the Algerians the current FIFA rankings have the Desert Foxes thirty places above the current crop of slightly less than magical Magyars, but after this summer’s dismal failure anything might happen.

Having said that, the contrite atmosphere that has permeated the press conferences given by Fabio Capello and Steven Gerrard this week have been encouraging yet slightly depressing. Admitting that there were various problems with both the preparation and execution of the World Cup campaign is refreshing, but the comments that were coming from the England camp before the World Cup contradicted those statements. Attempting to put those things right in one game won’t work and – like most fans – I’ll be extremely wary if the expected romp through the Euro 2012 qualification group materialises. It shouldn’t be forgotten that half of the World Cup semi finalists had to qualify via the playoffs.

Then there are the withdrawals. I’ve already commented on Robinson and Brown and to some extent I sympathise with their points of view, but although it’s encouraging to see that Capello has called up Scott Loach and Frankie Fielding from the Under 21 squad as replacements, he didn’t really have much choice in the matter and I seriously doubt that they’ll get any playing time tomorrow.

Spare a thought for Hungary though. Despite their 1954 squad being widely acknowledged as one of the best teams never to have won the World Cup, they haven’t qualified for a major tournament since 1986, although the under 20s finished third in the 2009 World Cup for that age group. That team was coached by Sandor Egervari, who replaced Erwin Koeman as senior team manager at the end of July. Although there are several well known names amongst the Hungarians – four of the squad play in England and keeper Gabor Kiraly played for Crystal Palace, Aston Villa and Burnley – the Hungarian league isn’t particularly good and it’s significant that only five of the twenty man squad play for domestic clubs. Kiraly is the most capped player in the current squad and any goals will come from either Zoltan Gera of Fulham or Tamas Priskin, who scored at the weekend for Ipswich Town.

Prediction: England to win and keep a clean sheet. Immediate post-match reaction tomorrow but it won’t be either an instant classic or have the same long term implications this game did, although after this summer’s shambles it could be argued we still haven’t learned the lessons from that foggy Wednesday afternoon in November 1953…

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…

Euro 2012 Draw

Group G: Bulgaria, England, Montenegro, Switzerland and Wales.