Squad For Egypt Friendly Announced

First the squad, then the opinion:

Goalkeepers:
David James (Portsmouth), Robert Green (West Ham), Joe Hart (Birmingham City, on loan from Manchester City)

Defenders:
Wes Brown (Manchester United), John Terry (Chelsea), Matt Upson (West Ham), Joleon Lescott (Manchester City), Ryan Shawcross (Stoke), Leighton Baines (Everton), Steven Warnock (Aston Villa)

Midfield
James Milner (Aston Villa), David Beckham (AC Milan), Theo Walcott (Arsenal), Frank Lampard (Chelsea), Gareth Barry (Manchester City), Steven Gerrard (probable captain, Liverpool), Michael Carrick (Manchester United), Shaun Wright-Phillips (Manchester City), Stewart Downing (Aston Villa)

Strikers
Emile Heskey (Aston Villa), Jermain Defoe (Spurs), Wayne Rooney (Manchester United), Peter Crouch (Spurs), Carlton Cole (West Ham)

We’re almost 100 days until the World Cup kicks off and Wayne Bridge’s decision to rule himself out of further contention for the England team plus injuries to Ashley Cole and Rio Ferdinand are casuing a major defensive headache. Injuries are one thing – and to be honest, it would have been a miracle if we’d gone into the tournament without any – but for an established international like Bridge to have withdrawn as a consequence of John Terry’s off-field behaviour vindicates the decision by Sr. Capello to look for on-field leadership elsewhere.

To his credit, at the end of last week Sr. Capello made it clear that if Bridge was to reconsider his decision, the Manchester City defender would be welcomed back to the squad. I really hope we haven’t heard the end of this because I think we may need Wayne Bridge this summer, especially as all sorts of rumours are flying around about Ashley Cole’s mental state following Cheryl Cole’s decision to end their marriage. If Cole (A)  is neither mentally nor physically fit this summer then he shouldn’t go to South Africa at all.

To cap it all, one of the defensive replacements has a lot of back page coverage this morning. I didn’t see Ryan Shawcross’ tackle on Aaron Ramsey (I was in the kitchen listening to the game while I cooked dinner) but as soon as I heard the commentary I was instantly reminded on a similar injury that occurred about a decade ago at my local club. Shawcross got an instant red card and left the field in tears. A few hours later he got his England call up.

Apart from the casualties listed above, Glen Johnson and Aaron Lennon are also injury concerns at the moment, thankfully Gary Cahill is on the mend after suffering a health scare with a blood clot, but Joe Cole is missing again, simply because he’s not playing regularly for Chelsea. Intriguingly, Theo Walcott returns to the squad and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him make an appearance at some point on Wednesday; his last chance to impress Capello perhaps.

To put all of this into some kind of perspective, if you think England’s preparations have been hampered by scandal and injuries, Chile have cancelled both of their friendlies that were scheduled for Wednesday after the country was hit by a massive earthquake on Saturday morning – the strongest one to affect the country for 50 years, which was the biggest ever recorded. We also haven’t sacked our manager – Vahid Halilhodzic was dumped by the Ivory Coast on Saturday, fuelling speculation that Guus Hiddink would take over for their World Cup campaign, although I don’t think Bora Milutinovic is busy at the moment.

Finally, a couple of follow up stories: there have been charges in the Salvador Cabanas shooting and it looks as if wounded Togo goalkeeper Kodjovi Obilale may be on his way back to France at last.

We’ll have a look at the Egypt squad on Tuesday evening – the game will be live on ITV in the UK everywhere other than Scotland (kick off at 8pm GMT) and although we haven’t decided to run one of our infamous live blogs for this game yet, we’ll let you know on Tuesday.

Pop Star’s Hubby Injured: World Cup Over

It was always bound to be a case of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’; following David Beckham’s metatarsal in 2002 and Wayne Rooney’s broken foot in 2006,  Ashley Cole may miss all or part of the World Cup finals with a fractured ankle.

Multiple ironic angles here: the injury was sustained when Cole was tackling Landon Donovan of the USAin Chelsea’s 2-1 defeat to Everton during the week: but now the door is wide open for Wayne Bridge to make an international return…alongside Errol Flynn. Obviously it’s Sr. Capello’s shout from here on in, but this needs to be sorted out as soon as possible, arguably before John Terry gets back from Dubai (where he’s been ‘talking’ to his wife) and definitely before the friendly versus Egypt.

The main reason: I would hope that our forthcoming opponents have too much class to start making comments about the ’situation’ between Terry and Bridge on the pitch – but all you need is a Marco Materazzi and Zinedine Zidane style incident and England could be on the next plane home.

Let’s just hope that no-one else gets crocked.

In other news…Sven-Goran Eriksson’s rather bizarre sojourn as Director of Football at Notts Countyis over after Notts were sold for £1. If some of the rumours flying around are to be believed, he may be moving from the sublime to the ridiculous; apparently he may be in line for the North Korea job. Sounds like a job for Photoshop if ever there was one; on that note, we’ll wish you a pleasant weekend and leave you with a song (which contains some choice language right at the start, so be warned!) that seems appropriate on a number of levels…

News Round Up

The draw for the 2012 European Championship qualifiers takes place tomorrow morning in Warsaw: there will be reaction to the draw at some point tomorrow but it won’t be immediate due to a family birthday celebration – happy birthday Sally!

We’re also looking at another 11lionslive event: barring any internet ‘issues’ it’s possible that we’ll cover the forthcoming friendly against African Nations Cup winners Egypt. More details later, probably via our Facebook page.

The latest John Terry nonsense  is all over the British papers and seemingly on an endless loop on Sky News, so there’s no point in rehashing it here other than expressing the opinion that Fabio Capello made the right decision to relieve Terry of the captaincy.

For Whom The Bell Tolls…

It seems that you can’t watch TV or read a newspaper in the UK without being told about John Terry’s latest indiscretions so here’s a link to the Daily Mirror report.

The only real football interest in the story is what Fabio Capello will do. The new story – combined with other issues – has dented Terry’s credibility as captain (to put it mildly) but some of the names that have been suggested as replacements are hardly paragons of virtue. Unfortunately it seems that the press seem to think of the captain of the England team should be some kind of knight in shining armour; which is a lesson that any professional footballer with either aspiring to or currently occupying that position ought to remember the first thing in the morning when they wake up or last thing at night when they go to bed.

It was interesting watching ‘The Andrew Marr Show’ on BBC2 this morning as Sophie Raworth was the guest presenter, presumably meaning considerably less embarrassment for the BBC as Marr had one of these so-called ‘super injunctions’ overturned a few weeks ago. Arguably that should have set alarm bells ringing in certain quarters, but if you are arrogant enough to think you can get away with everything up to and including trying to gag the press…

In other news…Togo have been banned for the next two African Cup of Nations tournaments after they withdrew from the 2010 tournament (that ends today) because their bus was attacked by gunmen. Fortunately reserve keeper Kodjovi Obilale is making an excellent recovery from the gunshot wounds he received in the attack. Ghana face Egypt later in the final: the semi-final between Algeria and Egypt ended with the latter defeating the former 4-0 and the Algerians finishing the game with eight players. Not letting Algeria have any time on the ball and going for an early goal might be the way forward for our Group C game against them (Friday 18th June, 7:30pm GMT); expect a lot of impassioned gesturing, rolling around and sulking – and the Algerians may also try something like that.

More good news: Paraguay striker Salvador Cabanas – who was shot in a bar in Mexico City last week – is also making good progress although his participation this summer is highly doubtful. It appears he was shot following an argument with a known Mexican gangster who accused Cabanas of not scoring enough goals for Club America.

And finally…Arsenal v Manchester United this afternoon. In 3D if you’re lucky enough to live near one of the bars with the equipment.