Friday, June 23, 2006
Well done Svennis
What an idiot. We really do have problems now with just 3 fit strikers (1 is useless and 1 has never played in the Premiership. In Tuesdays day with Sweden in Cologne, Michael Owen ruptured cruciate ligaments after just 1 minute and is unlikely to play again this year.
It's true that Owen hasn't found his best form yet but the same could be said of virtually every player and Owen is a tournament player. His record in the knock-out stages is played 4, scored 4 and losing him is a big blow to our chances.
Almost blindly, Eriksson still refuses to acknowledge there are problems. There was a good comment in the Times which summed up everything better than I could have write;
ASIDE FROM LOSING HIS TOP goalscorer to a serious knee injury, perhaps his senior centre half and leaking two goals with schoolboy defending, Sven-Göran Eriksson claimed that “there were many positive things” that came out of England’s 2-2 draw with Sweden. If he had been Mrs Lincoln, perhaps he would have said that “yes, apart from the shooting, I did rather enjoy the show”.
But enough of the football, lets move onto Cologne. For the third time, in just under 2 weeks, I jetted into Germany and amazingly with no delays for which I'm very grateful. My friend Paul met me at Cologne/Bonn airport as he was struggling for a hotel room so I said he could share with me. TIP: Don't drive in Cologne, it's a nightmare and with thousands of extra people around for the football, life didn't get much easier. The next shock was realising the hotel website hadn't charged my credit card when I made the reservation so I had to pay up for rooms which I thought were already paid for.
Eventually, we made our way over to an area of Cologne on the west side of the Rheine, near the Hauptbanhof to meet friends and get drunk. The first thing we saw was a guy passed out with paramedics sticking a needle in his arm - Welcome to Cologne.
There were thousands of people in the area drinking in the numerous cafes and bars and generally having a good time. The atmosphere was very friendly and at times, a bit rowdy with groups of people singing - English, Swedes and Germans. Sometime after midnight, we made our way back to the hotel and crashed out. The next morning, we went down to the Rheine Energie Stadion as I had to collect to tickets for the last 16 match in Leipzig. Its always good to know how long it takes to get to the stadium as well.
Outside the collection point, I met up with a friend who was looking for a ticket. A tout had quoted 800 Euros which was a lot less than the 1400 Euros we had been expecting after speaking to touts in Nuremburg. This is almost certainly due to the fact England had qualified and people were saving their money for the last 16 match. Later we heard that by kick-off, people had managed to get tickets for under 150 Euros.
We saw loads of Swedish fans in Cologne and as normal, there were tens of thousands of England fans in the city as well. For once, it looked like the crowd would be made up of real supporters. At the ground, we queued to get through the first security gates. This is the gate where they really take things seriously - no big flags, no drinks (you have to buy those in the stadium, of course) and definitely no advertising slogans. The Swedish guy in front of me had a small flag, about the size of a regular photo. In the corner was "IKEA" which some people couldn't read without their glasses. Yup, definitely not allowed to bring that in. Absolutely pathetic. I was less than impressed and being slightly drunk, I questioned the steward (rather loudly), if I was allowed in wearing my shorts as they had a NIKE logo on them as they aren't an official World Cup sponsor either. Luckily for the people around me, I was allowed to keep my shorts.
I won't go into details about the game but our long non-winning run against Sweden continues due to school-boy defending by John Terry allowed Larsson score equalise with practically the last kick of the game. At least it didn't affect who we played in the last 16 and now it's off to Stuttgart to face Ecuador on Sunday at 17:00.
SO now the tournament starts for real. No more messing around with tables, points and goal difference - it's pure knock-out. Draws are no good, winning is everything. England's path seems to be OK with a game against surprise team Ecuador and then after hopefully winning that, we have avoided Argentina in the QF. I'm leaving to fly to Munich in a couple of hours before catching the train to Stuttgart on Sunday morning. Lets hope I have something positive to report back next week
// posted by Big Blue Marble @ 8:26 am 
