World Cup Fever

Well, I've been away for a bit. Unsurprisingly, it's largely because I've been obsessively following the footy.

And, barring England's amazingly tedious tedium, it's been pretty good really. Lots of nice shocks, great to see Germany stutter, France and Italy go home early.

Frankly, if I hadn't been born in England I'd be ecstatic about England's travails too. They play a horrible football, which manages to be both pragmatic rather than flambouyant, yet at the same time also largely incompetent. And every time they look to start doing something well, they panic and decide to sit back and defend.

It's pretty horrible stuff to watch. Worse still, though, is the moronic fawning of the media over, say, John Terry hurling himself in front of a shot AND FAILING TO BLOCK IT! Fortunately someone else was actually competent to block it, but still the fawning is over bloody John Terry.

There's so much wrong with the way England play, and in part it's due to the media fawning. Because they love when Gerrard hares around like a headless chicken, they get into his head that he actually can tackle well, and is reliable at passing the ball out of defence. Both not true. He's very good attacking from midfield and has a good shot; and he can pick out a great long pass - but he'll make only 1 in 2 of the long passes and the other goes out of play. That's fine for raking crossfield passes from the left wing. It's utterly disastrous if it's played just in front of defence.

In addition, Rooney is told similar stuff. And Lampard. And the result is that they all think they need to be the fulcrum, all drift in to the middle, and all tread on each others toes, bringing their men in with them meaning that the others in midfield have no space either, and of course, have nobody to pass to. There's horrible positional discipline in this England team. It's really worth noting that they played much, much better when Gerrard stayed further out left against Slovenia.

And, of course, the media are hyping now England's progress when, in fact, they struggled to second place and, instead of being with Ghana, Korea, Uruguay, etc in their part of the draw, they are in with Germany, Argentina and presumably Spain and Portugal. That actually means all those cock-ups against Algeria and Slovenia will have cost us the easiest route ever to a World Cup semi final. Feeble.