They blew it

What a major cock up. Now I know how those Bayern Munich fans must have felt on THAT day. Leading 1-0 after 90 minutes with only 3 minutes of stoppage time, and what do you do? Why, you needlessly concede a freekick, and then the keeper position himself badly to perpetually *watch* the ball sail into the net, then make a superb defense splitting pass, only that it's to a player from the opposite team and its towards your goal, and that also doesn't take into account the fact that you missed a penalty to wrap up the game after 20 minutes time by taking a shot even my grandmother could have predicted.

OK, i think i shall cool down a bit now. I am sure that there will be many many finger pointing activities going around in the world of the England supporters right now, and rightly so. However for me, my finger will be pointing first towards the tactics that they were playing that night. To tell you the truth, from the way that they played, whatever Sven Goran Eriksson has been blabbering to the press about his "confidence" in the England team to match the French, is absolutely horse shit. From the way that he set out the English team to play, it was just so damn obvious that he was oh so scared of the French team, but playing with 8 defenders and Rooney and Owen. I mean, thats the sort of tactics teams like Malaysia would employ against the French team. Defend for your life, and if you're lucky, hit them on the break or through a set piece. I do agree that against a team like the French, ANY team should play with caution, but not to the extent of what the English were doing. It was just so obvious what they were doing.

I don't really feel like writing much about the game as I am still disillusioned by what happened. Truth be told, for me, i think a draw would have been a fair result since both sets of players didn't really show us what they could do. Players from the French side like Pires and Henry couldn't reproduce their form that they have consistently shown for Arsenal almost every week, while Zidane, although he made himself pretty busy and got involved in the middle of the park, couldn't offer much imagination to penetrate the eight man English wall. Players from the English side i guess didn't play any better as well, with Gerrard disciplined but quiet shielding the English back four, and had an OK game until he made the mistake he will never repeat in his life again, while el "Golden Balls" Kapitan other than his goal assisting free kick and "golden opportunity to wrap up the game" missing spot kick was virtually anonymous the rest of the game. (Now come to think of it even more, why on earth the much lesser known teams, like Greece the other night, never have any issues when it comes to penalty taking?!! ). Even Owen, i didn't notice that he was playing until he got substituted for Darius Vassell.

The bright side of it is, it can't get any worse than this right? OK, actually come to think of it, i CAN DEFINITELY be worse, but I guess against teams like Switzerland and Croatia, Eriksson would (and indeed SHOULD) dump the ultra negative tactics and let the players express themselves freely on the pitch. More of the same from the Iceland game PLEASE. Also, Rooney also showed glimpses of why he is so highly rated in the England camp. The highlight would of course be him running past the French defence and enticing Silvestre into conceeding a penalty.

OK enough of that. I think I will be sleeping early tonight, since I was absolutely struggling to stay awake in the office. Need.. sleep... Bed... Mmm... Now i can start to think of how cool it would be to be driving the new Merc SLR. Sweeeet...