England have made a mediocre start to their world cup campaign with a draw with the USA at the Royal Bafokeng Sports Palace in Rustenburg.
Our new captain, the paragon of virtue that is Steven Gerrard, opened England’s account in the Rainbow Nation, with a cracking 4th minute goal, which unfortunately I missed, but I will tell you about that later. Rob Green had a howler allowing Clint Dempsey to score an equaliser in the 40th minute.
England had a very good first half, every time we got forward, we looked like we could score, and frankly by half time we should have had 3, the Yanks back line looked very confused, almost like they had never played with other before, but we failed to convert those chances to goals, I personally think we should have started with Crouch rather than Heskey, then maybe we would have gotten some of those goals. When Crouch came on, he began to have a impact, but he didn’t have enough time to turn the game around. Don’t get me wrong Heskey had a good game, but he is not a great striker, but might be better redeployed into a midfield role.
In the second half, our midfield fell apart, there was a lack of disipline and professionalism there, Carragher and Gerrard began to resort to thug tactics, very rough tackles and picked up yellow cards, and kept risking getting a second and reducing us down to 10 men. The midfield really let us down today, we missed Gareth Barry and Joe Cole, who really should have been playing today.
Rooney looked a bit lost, when he plays for Manchester United, he knows he has Scholes and Valencia looking to give him a good ball. But tonight he looked like a loner, Gerrard, Lampard & Wright-Phillips didn’t even looked up to pass him the ball. How frustrating. We have the world’s best centre forward and he can’t weave his magic because of the poor midfield. But he still got a few chances that almost got past Howard, if we can just get the supply to him right, then he will score some crackers.
And as for Lampard and Gerrard, why oh why can they not play together, its madness. Aaron Lennon had a really good game setting up two very good chances, one for Heskey and one for Lampard, and for me, he was my man of the match.
Personally I would drop Gerrard as captain, I have never rated him as Liverpool captain. He is too aggressive and a thug, he is a very poor captain. For me John Terry should never have had the armband removed, and this shows why he needs to be reinstated. He was able to control the team and kept them well disciplined, and at the same time, I never, ever, want to see Lampard and Gerrard playing together for England again. We have gone for years seeing how they simply cannot play together, they have no chemistry, and just don’t understand how the other plays.
Lets be honest, England played well individually, but didn’t play as well as a team, particularly in midfield, and I think our drop in performance compared to our qualification campaign is mostly down to John Terry no longer having the armband, and whilst I could make excuses for us in the warm-up games, I can’t make excuses this time. But at the same time, the USA are no longer the minnows they once were, the MLS, and the way its run has really helped the USA develop a very good generation of players. The development of what they call “soccer-specific stadium” and reasonable wages encouraging the development 0f local talent and if they keep it up the USA can develop into one of the strongest teams in the world.
Well for fans of omens, will know that in 2006, Italy started out with a 1-1 draw against the USA, and in 1966, we drew our first game with Uruguay, so you never know.
ITV = FAIL
As for ITVs coverage, well what a disaster, I am lucky enough to have a HD Satellite box, so I was really looking forward to watching the world cup in HD. Well this game was shown on ITVs newly launched ITV1 HD channel, and 4 minutes into the game, it cut to a Hyundai advert and came back with an SD picture, where we were able to see Gerrards goal celebration!!! See below:-
What a disaster, it did switch back to HD for about 7 minutes and then resumed SD again for the rest of the match. A very very poor performance, and the apology was terrible, Adrian Chiles apologised for some interruptions, I would hardly call having an ad break just as England score thier first goal of the World Cup an interruption, I would calling its a disaster. But what can we expect from a lowbrow channel like ITV?
ITV have the next England game, so lets hope they sort this out for next time.
Come on England!
Michael
