England 1-1 USA
Hello and Welcome, to what is hopefully going to be a regular and again, hopefully light hearted look at England's progress in South Africa for the World Cup, 2010.
Well, it all started last Friday with a spectacular opening ceremony, followed by a less than spectacular, but entertaining 1-1 draw between the hosts and Mexico. This was swiftly followed later that evening by the quite awful goalless draw between France and Uruguay.
Moving onto Saturday and South Korea's somewhat comfortable 2-0 win over a poor looking Greece and I have now had just about enough...
Of the football, no, I am loving it! I have had enough of the VUVUZELA!! In the first game, I found it quite interesting, the second game, slightly irratating and at the end of the 3rd game, I quite literally want to rip my ears off. To hear a droning sound of swarming bees throughout 90 minutes of football is a bit much and more importantly, it is drowning out the chanting supporters and the commentary - which some may say is by no means a bad thing...
Anyway, moving on, we had Argentina's victory over Nigeria to enjoy before the one we had all been waiting for, England v USA and normal service has been resumed.
Watching England in a tournament has been described as getting on a rollercoaster and last night was no different. It all started well enough though and some slick football saw Heskey feed Gerrard who poked it past Howard after 4 minutes to give England the lead.
Although the USA were by no means out of it, no one quite expected what was to happen on 40 minutes, when Clint Dempsey tried his luck from 25 yards, but Green hopelessly allowed the ball to squeeze through him and roll agonisingly over the line as he tried to recover.
Not surprisingly, the media have slaughtered Green for this blunder, but little have mentioned a superb second half save from Altidore, but the papers had their scapegoat and they milked it.
Personally, as much as I found the game frustrating, I didn't think it was all that bad. Stand out players for me were Emile Heskey, Glen Johnson and mine and many others man of the match - Steven Gerrard. Also, subdued for the majority of the game, Wayne Rooney had a decent last half an hour and England were well on top.
So, a draw it was and the typically slow start to a tournament continues for England. Today we have seen fellow group members Slovenia beat Friday's opponents Algeria, 1-0. Then followed an enjoyable Ghana victory over Serbia as the African's continue their Celebration of the Tournanment competion. A short while ago, the final whistle went on Germany's 4-0 win over Australia and dare I say it, the best team we have seen so far in this World Cup - 14/1 at the start??? Hmmmmmm....
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