England vs France

True Buney - and I guess the heat comes into it for the early kick offs. Certainly did me in the Dunstable 10K yesterday!

'a bad point, well made'?!?!? If anything, I would have thought it's the other way round: it was a pretty mediocre (all right then, average!) game of football (drama aside), perhaps a point not particularly well made?!?!

'What was Gerrard thinking of'? The same as the rest of team (a point already made - being defensive minded) - give it to the keeper so he could boot it to row Z.

And strikers don't necessarily take penalties and, yes, Beckam has always (I think) taken them for England. Owen's failings are in other areas. Besides, he (Owen) has even stopped taking them for Liverpool, as his rate of conversion is less than 50%.

England lost to Germany on penalties in semi-finals in both Italia 90 and Euro 96. I think I am right.

There have been fewer more pleasurable moments than watching Baggio missing his penalty against Brazil. A team that should have been put out the whole way through the tournament but managed to scrape into the final. Sweet justice.

And now he's retired we can enjoy football without any more references to "the divine ponytail" - yah de yah de yah.

cruel !

Il divino never lived it down


and England have a few crucial penalty misses i seem to recall

by men with bad haircuts ...

Diamond Lights anyone?

England's missed penaltys have an inevitability about them which takes the shine off them a tad.

:)

Game two of the day kicking off shortly. Back later. Sweden are my dark horse for this tournament.

perhaps England are now suffering from having too many foreign players in the Premiership. They are all gaining good experience. apart from Beckham all your players are from the premiership , well the ones you now have to pick from

and bar a few of the Arsenal players not much of a successful season to have given them confidence going into the tourney

:-))

oh well i'll sign out now and let there be much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Relive the action. It's as if you are really there.

WOW! a team that can play and score goals and that has some nice looking supporters. Sweden Italy might actually be a good match if this hasn't flattered to deceive.

Hope not Dodge, love to see Sweden beat Italy in the same manner as last night's game.

But before I can think about that, I'm getting ready for the big one tonight between next door neighbours and best of "friends" Germany & Holland.

Looks like Germany are going for a not too adventurous 4-5-1 with Kuranyi up front on his own. I'm content with that as I'm not looking for fast flowing "sexy football" here, a dire midfield dog fight with the occasional break-away attack will do nicely. That would suit Kuranyi & Ballack but they need the midfield to perform well too. Dull? Yes, probably, but I don't care about performance here, the result is everything. I can see Hamann being critical because that defence is organised but fragile and could do with some protection. I wouldn't fancy swoping places with Wörns or Nowotny for this one. How they'll keep van Nistelrooy under control I don't know, but they have to do it somehow. I suppose the trick is to do him enough damage to take him out of the game without getting booked or sent off. Not easy given the fact that he an expert at getting players booked without them touching him!

There aren't many Germany fans around these parts, so if they lose this, it'll be a very long day tomorrow - there's enough people around here sufficiently well up on football to know that losing 1-0 to Holland would be much worse that the famous 1-5 game in Munich and you can imagine what I had to put up with after that!

just hope the dutch don't beat themselves.they do have a bad habit of expressing opinions even when they know it could be destructive.must admit the english trait of "shutting up and getting on with it"has much more merit.

Needless to say that's exactly what I'm hoping for Travis. The Dutch might be the better side on paper at the moment but if they get too cocky, they'll get beaten.