When the daylight streamed into the room, I rolled over to check the time and saw that it was 6 a.m. "Damn!", I thought, "I've probably missed the revival and stunning victory that Rooney himself predicted would be easy, for even an under-strength England side! Dammit!"
Moments later, and after checking the scores on the BBC website, I felt simultaneously pissed off and ecstatic. Pissed off cus Wayne Rooney obviously lied to everyone and super-happy cus I didn't waste 2 hours of valuable sleeping time over it.
England had drawn to Algeria 0-0, in a lackluster, drab and extremely dull encounter. Boy was I happy / angry! So, what does this result mean? Well, basically, it means that England are crap! Sorry for the language but, seriously, this is a terrible result.
In terms of qualification, what it means is that there's still no need to panic. This seems to be the general message being voiced from the England camp. Don't panic, don't panic. We just need to win our next game and we're through!
I don't know. Maybe I'm becoming cynical in my old age but hell, from the highlights I saw, England were exactly all those things; lackluster, drab and extremely dull. And to top it all, as Wayne Rooney was walking off the pitch, he turned to the camera and said: "Nice to hear your own fans booing you, that's loyal supporters".
Well, I think I'm not alone when saying that if I was one of those supporters, I'd be pretty annoyed too. Maybe £1000-odd is not that much money for Wayne, but I'm sure it's quite a big dent on the wallets of many of those England supporters who traveled out there, and I think they've got every right to boo the team off the pitch.
Maybe this is also what the team needs too. A kick up the backside and someone to tell them we're not happy with all this. But isn't that Capello's job? Anyway, I guess we've got nothing else but hope... so lets stick to that. Thanks England! I was kinda hoping for some good football instead of hoping or depending on hope itself.
Anyway, on to Germany! Yay! The Germans are in a bit of an interesting position too. At least it wasn't only us that had a stinker. Playing against Serbia at the Nelson Mandela Bay Stadium and after having thrashed the Ozzies 4-0 in their previous encounter, the Germans were seriously caught out with their over confidence.
Before the match, The German newspaper Bild had stated: "We're going to blow you all away"! Well, they certainly blew something away! At least, unlike ours, the game was exciting though. The Germans were having most of the chances until 2 stupid tackles by Miroslav Klose earned him 2 yellow cards and an early bath.
To be fair, he probably didn't deserve the first one, but after receiving it, he really should have been a little more careful. 90 seconds later, the Serbs got their goal through Milan Jovanovic and then held on to take a shock victory 1-0. Lukas Podolski wasted the best of the Germans' chances, including a penalty, easily saved by Vladimir Stojkovic after Nemanja Vidic had inexplicably handballed in the box.
The other match saw a riveting contest between Slovenia and the USA. The Slovenians took a shock 2-0 lead into the break before being pegged back in the 2nd with goals from Landon Donovon and Michael Bradley and they should have won it with a last-ditch goal that was unfairly ruled out for a mysterious tug in the box.
Donovon hit a good free kick into the box and for a moment, it seemed the Americans had done the unthinkable and snatch it at the end when Maurice Edu hit a great volley into the back of Handanovic's net, but the celebrations were cut short as referee Koman Coulibaly, officiating in his first ever world cup, disallowed the goal for a pull on one of the Slovenian defenders.
Donovon hit a good free kick into the box and for a moment, it seemed the Americans had done the unthinkable and snatch it at the end when Maurice Edu hit a great volley into the back of Handanovic's net, but the celebrations were cut short as referee Koman Coulibaly, officiating in his first ever world cup, disallowed the goal for a pull on one of the Slovenian defenders.
It was an unfair finale to the game and one the Americans will rightly be furious about but they'll have to pick themselves up and (like the English, and everyone else in the group) win their last game if they're to have any chance of making it through to the next round.
All in all, it was a day of big ego's getting smashed (maybe not so much for the Americans but certainly for the English and Germans). Will this serve as a message to be learned from? I guess we'll only know next week.
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