The highlight of this match for me was my TiVo. I deliberately got up 20 minutes late so there would be some “tape in the bank” so I could fast forward over the half time show. It also meant I could fast forward over the many times one of the Paraguay players rolled around on the grass “hurt”.

Oh yeah, there was a game though not much of one. England need to shape up if they want to win this thing. I’ve never liked the send the ball forward, hope it hits the head of an attacker strategy the national team uses. Give the ball to Joe Cole, let him run with it, take them on and get people into positions. They should play how the Premiership teams play, aggresive attacking.

As with all England games, each one is going to be in doubt until the final whistle.

So, the Portuguese coach says he definitely isn’t going to be the next England coach; apparantly he doesn’t like being hounded by the press. Go figure. But it seems to me that the England football coach should be an Englishman, not some bloody foreigner. Can you imagine the French or German teams hiring someone from another country? Now, it may be that we don’t have any decent coaches (unlikely) but even if true, the England coach should be like the England players: English.

I know everyone has seen this before a thousand times over but in celebration of England’s 2-1 defeat of Uruguay last night, uninspired or not, and the fact we are only 100 days from the World Cup, let’s revisit:

the badgers celebrating Euro 2004

Today was the draw for the World Cup Finals being held in Germany next year. England are in Group B with Paraguay, Trinidad & Tobago and Sweden. Of course all games at this level are difficult (and any game involving England is ten times more difficult than it needs to be) but one would expect us to have a very good chance of progressing to the next round. You can see the rest of the groups here at the BBC.

Enough ranting and moaning, here are a couple of pictures from a trip I took with my Dad to Marwell Zoo last month; to see all of them go to this Flickr photo set.