If Germany were shaky, England were worse. Most hyped team. Paper tigers. Winning by an own goal :P. Peter Crouch. A striker who strikes everything but the ball. Ouch! I doubt if England will reach the quarter final. And their exit might coincide with Wimbledon? Then BBC will have Henman to hype with 
And yes. Ecuador is very impressive. If England qualify from this group they might meet the Germany,Ecuador group in the next round. I would want to see England play Ecuador. It should be good fun
on 11 Jun 2006 at 3:55 am # Anand
So far impressed with Ecuador, Trinidad & Tobago & Ivory Coast.
Jenson Button is our of pole position this week @ Britain Formula 1, so the whole media will be talking about Beckham for this week.
on 11 Jun 2006 at 11:54 am # Srivat
England match was very funny.Every now and then when somebody went down, the assistant England coach(??) called the players for drinks and discussed strategies with them :-D.
Add the wierd substitutions of Sven and his post match interview.I haven’t laughed like that for quite sometime. ESPN had Steve and Jerry Armstrong panel and they were fuming at Sven’s strategies.
on 11 Jun 2006 at 1:09 pm # Bala (Karthik)
Ferrari,
Spot on!! Couldn’t agree with you more. Hype, thy name is England. India la public tholla thaanga mudila Ferrari
Varavan/Varaval porava ellam onnu “Brazil” illa “England” appadinu solla vendiyadhu, whether they know anything about the game or the teams at all is immaterial!
By the way, why the fcuk [excuse the language] is Erikson still at the job????? Beats me…
on 11 Jun 2006 at 4:55 pm # WA
“whether they know anything about the game or the teams at all is immaterial” - How true
on 11 Jun 2006 at 8:18 pm # Karthik
Nalla sonninga Prabhu.. Enga cable karan live telecast eduvum kudukaradhillai. Instead we watch a delayed telecast
Aana seekarathula India Englanda minjidum pola irukku, i mean hype la.. NDTV karan panra kodumai ellam thanga mudiyalai. Daily some 10 hrs futtuballa pathi pesikitirukkanga.
Fernando has won again
- me a Micheal fan. Looks like Alonso will win Championship ala cruising
on 11 Jun 2006 at 8:23 pm # Karthik
Have started talking to my Managers. The nearest they are willing to send is Belfast
Jothi la aiykyamaga vida mattendranga pa
on 12 Jun 2006 at 6:54 am # visithra
So i wasnt the only one who thought the england game was boring? So was the argentina one n the holland one -
but compared to all the games so far i do think the germany costa rica game was good
on 12 Jun 2006 at 7:34 am # BNB
Good point about English hype. I have always regarded them as extremely mediocre, but very media savvy. Beckham has been squeezed for all that’s he worth. One Euopean team at it’s prime was real good and almost played like the Americans - Italy, ish-style, enna style-maa italians. But it’s surprising how such mediocre teams (as in the English league) have such huge following in India.
on 12 Jun 2006 at 7:35 am # BNB
oops, I meant South Americans.
on 12 Jun 2006 at 12:49 pm # raj
But you are forgetting that this is also teh most f***ing lucky team in football history -these sad idiots won a World Cup Final thanks to a referee not spotting a German goal - and for 40 years, have been crying from rooftops about that golden generation - my foot!
Just wait and watch - England will go through on Goal Difference - thanks to a mistaken penalty or something like that - like, Paraguay need to draw against Sweden to beat England to Second round - and in the last minute, the referee will fail to spot a Sweden ‘dive’ and give a penalty against Paraguay - thus getting England into second round, where England will probably again get through by luck against Ecuador or Costa Rica.
I Hope they run into the Germans in the second round - that’s one opponent who will give them a good stuffing - but alas! Thats unlikely to happen
on 12 Jun 2006 at 8:04 pm # kumari
Truer words have never been spoken
Did England play at all in that match? Chumma vanthuttu pona mathiri irunthuchu. Adhukku, Argentina-Ivory Coast match was a lot better. Ivory Coast atleast kept a good fight right till the end. I liked the Mexico-Iran match too, there were some fine moments
Aana enga thalaivar Ronaldinho eppo varuvarnu kathuttu irukken :p
on 12 Jun 2006 at 8:27 pm # soccerfan
It is very wrong to tell that Eng are hyped up. of course they had a poor game against Paraguay. All the players were playing below par. Surely Eng will improve and qualify for the next ruond. Eng will definitely beat Germany in the R16. Cummon this German team is really bad. Its in fact pathetic without Ballack and the defense is extremely fragile.
The team of the tournament so far has been Argentina. They have just been brilliant and their finishing has been clinical. Saviola was on a mission and wud have definitely scored one more had the coach persisted with him. But the player of the 4 days has been Roman Riquelme. He was able to find space when he wanted to and the set piece goal scored by crespo wudnt have been possible without that perfect delivery from Roman. The second goal was also brilliant, finding Saviola with amazing vision. Ivory Coast played good attacking football with Arg defending bravely. The best part of Arg was that they were working brilliantly as a team with players like Maxi (R wing) doing defensive duties for the incompetent Burdisso and also helping out Sorin in the Left.
If Pekerman had not taken off saviola and had brought in Tevez instead of that worthless Palacio Arg wud not have had to defend so deeply.
Arg are playing well as a team and that is wht football is all about. They arehaving drawbacks, like, Burdisso and Cambiasso (surprisingly off colour but he is a wonderful player). But the team played as a unit and were able to cope up with the drawbacks with players helping out each other.
I guess the game against S&M will also be a tough one for Arg as it will test their arial strength (all Latin American teams are vulnerable in air and SM are one of the exponents of set pieces in the current campaign with their impressive Milosevis and Vikic 6ft-8in tall).
on 12 Jun 2006 at 11:37 pm # littlecow
Why would you say that Germany was bad? The offence and mid-field was fine enough I thought… granted, the defence played too many off-side traps and wanchope’s second goal was an off-side it appeared… but its their first game and they did just fine. As for england, err… well…
on 13 Jun 2006 at 10:45 am # raj
Germany might be bad. Might be. But they will beat the hell out of England every time they play England in a big tournament. Every time.
on 13 Jun 2006 at 2:44 pm # soccerfan
littlecow:
Look at the way Germany conceded the goals. The strikers were unmarked and not in just the goals but even when C Rica where attacking Germany was leaving too much free space for opposition players dangerously close to the penalty area. Just go back to the Czech-US game or the Italy-Ghana game the goals where scored when the goal scorer was left unchallenged when in possession of the ball and that is a major cause of concern for Germany. Klinsmann has openly admitted to the defensive problem after the first game and he shd take remedial measures.
Raj:
England def Germany in Euro 2000 (1-0), in the WC qualifiers of WC2002 4-1. And will defeat the current German team shd they meet as Eng have a strong defense(probably strongest) and are better than Germany at set pieces.