Monday 4 January 2010

Monday 4 January 2010 – 158 DAYS TO THE WORLD CUP

On Saturday 5 December the day after the World Cup The Sun churlishly ran with the headline:

England
Algeria
Slovenia
Yanks

To describe Group C as being “easy” for England is all but tempting fate for a bad world cup ahead of us. If anything I can’t help but find it incredibly annoying that we have to face the USA as quite frankly I suspect they will give it everything to beat just because that is their mentality as a nation. Already I have heard catcalls in certain corners from American journalists regarding the dentistry and mannerisms of our female population.

With Capello running the scene it is hard to see England failing to qualify from this group. I do genuinely think that the Americans are going to give us a good game but realistically are Slovenia or Algeria going to cause us any great problems? At the end of the day our biggest opponents are going to be ourselves, our mental conditioning and whether egos and passion are going to be properly contained.

The dark horses of the group just may be Slovenia who despatched the much fancied Russian team in the play offs. Very little is known about the Slovenians although they did finish above the Czech Republic, Northern Ireland and Poland in Group 3. On a bad day you fear that this is just the kind of team that could provide a banana skin for England to slip up on.

As for Algeria all eyes will be on their performance in the upcoming Africa Cup of Nations where they are grouped against host nation Angola.

No comments:

Post a Comment