Soccer Goals Safari

Okay, so a little housekeeping before the main part of this blog post. Rio Ferdinand, gone! Yes, that’s old news and he arrived back in England today. After crippling his knee in a training match, he was replaced by Michael Dawson.

The tale of the World Cup so far is a story of the mundane. Really boring games, with very little to write home about, except the age-old excuses used by goalkeepers about the shape of the balls and how they do all manner of dodgy acrobatics when kicked towards the goal. So after a few drawn games where the excitement of the tournament sort of drained away, it was time to watch my own team England play against the USA in their opening to the 2010 World Cup campaign. The England team had some unexpected inclusions and omissions. There was no place for Joe Cole, with Michael Carrick in the starting line up, who was replaced by Shawn Wright-Phillips later on. Great goal by Gerrard early doors, assisted by Heskey and things seemed to be on track.

Minutes before half time, the usual collywobbles appeared with perhaps the most ludicrous goalkeeping gaffe in World Cup history, as Rob Green fumbled a fairly tame strike which saw the USA equalise – and which one of the Sunday papers described amusingly as the “Hand of Clod”. Maybe he can be forgiven just once as this was Green’s World Cup debut, and he was not the only keeper to make a serious error over the weekend, with Algeria’s goalie misjudging the bounce on a similarly lame shot from Slovenia. On balance, with a defence seriously short of pace, England were perhaps lucky to escape with the draw, and their report card should read, “Must do better.”

The games continued in the usual fashion of soul-destroying draws and overly defensive encounters until the Germans took on Australia. Never expected to provide entertaining football, Germany set fire to the tournament with a decisive 4-0 drubbing of their antipodean opponents, in a game with an almost surreal – not to mention unfair – sending off of Australia’s top man Cahill. It was a straight red card for a challenge which looked far worse than it actually was, with no contact being made with the German defender. That’s probably Australia done for now. At least there were some excellent goals in the game, Klose’s in particular. So thanks for that Deutschland!

Roll on Brazil! A game that might see more than just a few goals; we’ll have to wait and see. Meanwhile, on the England front, Ledley King got mullered with a groin strain which will see him unfit for duty for three weeks; he’s out basically, gone! Next defender please! They’ll need to make a few decent selection choices now to get wins against Algeria and Slovenia; anything less will certainly put England in a very precarious position. Next game Friday against Algeria at 8.30 South African time (or 7.30 in the UK).