Let’s start with congratulations for Cesc Fabregas who became Spain’s youngest ever World Cup player when he came on during their 4-0 win over Ukraine yesterday.
The Spanish looked very good but definitely had luck on their side. Villa’s free kick took a deflection which wrong-footed the keeper and quite how the referee gave a penalty against Vaschuk let alone a red card is beyond me. If FIFA have any sense of fair play they’ll rescind the card and he won’t have to serve a suspension.
Spain did score the goal of the tournament so far though and Cesc was involved along with Carles Puyol as a flowing move ended with Fernando Torres burying the ball in the bottom corner. They’ll certainly take a lot of confidence from that.
Last night Jens Lehmann was practically untroubled as Germany huffed and puffed against Poland. It looked the Polish keeper and their crossbar were to be the heroes of the night but Oliver Neuville’s 91st minute winner more or less sealed Germany’s qualification to the next round. Harsh on the Poles though who went down to 10 men because of an officious referee. The game was littered with yellow cards and there wasn’t a bad tackle in the whole game. Michael Ballack proved that he’s a great player, his passing was superb, but a great actress as well, along with a number of his colleagues.
England take on Trinidad and Taboggan later on. Will Theo Walcott figure? He wouldn’t if Harry Redknapp was England boss. The former Southampton boss says of the teenager:
From what I hear even the Arsenal players are not sure how good Walcott is. I certainly think he’s not up to it. I think Eriksson has taken a massive gamble in selecting only four strikers and, because he’s not good enough, Walcott won’t figure at all.
Redknapp is right. He’s no Svetoslav Todorov, that’s for sure.
Ashley Cole will play though and he’s being urged to get forward more. Mark Lawrenson tells the Mirror Cole is the best left back in the world. The latest on his Arsenal situation is that it now seems more likely that he’ll stay than go. Honestly it seems to change every fucking week so from now on I have nothing more to say about his future until something concrete happens.
Apart from Gilberto coming to the defence of useless porker Ronaldo there’s very little else going on. England should be fun to watch later though. Can they actually score a goal themselves? Can they play good football despite their miserable, dour coach?
We shall see. Till tomorrow.
