England's World Cup Chances

So here we go. England's 23 for the world cup will be announced today. As usual there will be inordinate hype about our chances, inordinate excitement, dreadfull puff pieces about the usual suspects.

I don't often watch the friendlies, because there's almost nothing as deathly dull as an England friendly with ITV commentators desperately trying to find something to talk about, trying to make it seem like it's important, and trying to push the idea of how wonderful the team are, but I caught quite large sections of the Japan match, and bits of the Mexico game, too. Fortunately with the sound off.

And the only conclusion I can have is that if England are to get to the semi finals or final, then there are one of three things going on

- England will have improved dramatically in a few weeks
- The opposition are very bad indeed
- There's a lot of luck involved.

Of course, this is entirely to be expected. The press won't remind you of this, but right now England are ranked 8th in the world. That means, as any fule kno, we should, just, scrape into the quarter finals, although it would be no disgrace to get knocked out in the second round. This is not the ranking of a team expecting to win the tournament. Of course, there's a chance, given that this is football, but it is basically very unlikely we'll make the last four.

And from watching bits of the friendlies, this is no surprise at all. Primarily because the defence is rubbish. It's used to the hype - Rio and Terry have been told so often that they are oak hearted world class titans that they don't bother to try to improve any more. Which means that, being rather slow and ponderous of both foot and head, they are often turned, often caught out of position, and, in Rio's case, often caught with his brain off in another planet as an opposing attacker strolls past him. How he's managed to become England captain with his mix of failing to show for drugs tests, vacantness on the pitch, and general lack of maturity, would be baffling if the rest of the team wasn't full of the likes of Wayne Rooney and Ashley Cole.

It's a bunch of players that can surely garner no love at all, it makes it hard to support a team full of deeply unlikeable people. In the end, of course, I'll be wailing and gnashing my teeth as we get knocked out. But right now, I feel little warmth for them. I just hope Fabio keeps them on a very tight leash; and - more - tries to keep expectations in the press reasonable.

Unfortunately, it's a self-sustaining beast. The media thrive on having access to "the world's best players" so they need to push the idea that Fat Frank and Barroom brawling Stevie G or drugs cheating Rio or womanising and daft John T or just plain greedy Ashley or fumbling and useless but actually not a bad bloke David James are, actually, on a par with the likes of Messi or Ronaldo or Xavi.