I think it’s time for a final comment on the World Cup. A very satisfactory World Cup for all England football supporters. But maybe very unsatisfactory in many other ways. Being retired I have watched all fifty something games played so far and I believe that unless we stamp out the cheating divers this could signal the end of the worlds love of what used to be ‘The Beautiful Game’. OK that's the serious comment over.


Why were the quarter finals a success for England? Well let’s look at it bit by bit.


Had we won the Cup we would have had to like Sven and that would be difficult to do.
It would mean actually believing he picked the best squad to go to Germany.

It would mean believing that taking only four strikers, two of whom were injured and one simply taken for a holiday was the correct decision.
It would mean believing that putting our best playing twenty yards ahead of his nearest colleagues and then hitting the ball over his head made any sense.

It would mean believing that changing to 4:5:1 was a preconceived plan.
Well I for one don’t believe any of it. I think he was only here for the dosh and because of the results I don’t have to change my mind. So that’s a result.


But all that said, we still know we had the players to win the cup so we needed other influences to blame for failure on the pitch and fortunately we were given Rooney’s broken metatarsal before the competition started. (Broken metatarsal! Before Beckham broke his had anyone ever heard of a footballer breaking a metatarsal? Now they are all over the place, we even had four in our local leagues last season.) So at that point we now knew we could have won the cup if only.... And then with uncalled for haste, Wayne comes back and causes us to lose that excuse so Michael Owen has to take centre stage and injure himselfin an attempt to give us a similar excuse as to why we were not going to win. So here we are comfortable with the fact that we could have won the cup if only....

That’s how we like it :Magnificent Failures it the English way.


But then it gets even better. In the quarter final along comes Christiano Ronaldo, forever to be known now as TTPP (that Twinkle Toed Portuguese Ponce). He endeavours and succeeds in getting Rooney sent off, it’s perfect. It’s not even our players fault now, not Sven’s fault, not the system's fault, it’s all down to a cheating TTPP. What more as supporters do we want, it couldn’t be better. We put up a heroic ten man performance and lose on penalties. Magnificent Failures, it’s perfect.


So who do we want to win? Italy perhaps? I think they had a very good semi and they may also have more chance as they have probably already agreed the score with the ref. To some people outside Italy this may seem like an advantage but back home it will seem like a normal game.





So that leaves France and I am unhappy about them because they sent the Brazilian fans back home and I find that almost unforgivable but any team that can make the TTPP cry has got to have my vote.


"Vive la France!"


How about that? A whole posting with no mention of Christine, scones, bread or vegetables. It won’t last.