No- with Bellamy at Liverpool he will be struggling to be on their subs bench next season.

I've been really imporessed by the Portuguese; they are a team nobody wants to play. Portugal to go all out to win as I cannot see the Dutch getting ahead of Argentina.

A huge test of whether Ghana can put successive great performances together. If they do, the weakened US defense is in for a torrid time.

The defensive disorganisation was worthy of Boro losing 7-0 to Arsenal, 4-0 to Sevilla and being terrorised by Kuqi twice in six days at the Riverside. That was an attrocious performance at the back- nobody knew what they were doing and Ashley Cole couldn't even cover the back post properly. As for Hargreaves, he was terrible. I watched him for about twenty minutes and I'd say every passing decision he made was wrong and he got caught in possession twice (including needlessly losing the ball which lead to the corner for Sweden's first equaliser). Utterly depressing situation for England. By the way, Italian TV followed Rooney throwing a complete paddy on the bench over being substituted.

For you betting types, Shevchenko is probably at much longer odds than either he or Ukraine should have been because of that exceptional Spanish performance.

http://football.guardian.co.uk/worldcup200...1801690,00.html Meanwhilst back in Italy, football is not corrupt at its roots but it has some corrupt branches.... like Juve, AC, Fiorentina, Lazio????

Rooney and Owen, if fit, would be contenders to play in any England side in the last 50 years. All other English-born forwards currently available would not only fail to get into any of the last dozen England World Cup squads (including the years we did not qualify), they would not even be contenders for inclusion. That is the problem in a nut shell. At least Crouch got the first decent header in his life onto the cross from Beckham to avert a T&T embarassment and for that we should be grateful.

There were some horrible fluffs by the Aussies from promising positions and must be a huge sense of what might have been against a Brazil which hasn't clicked and is showing little sign of doing so. I guess Ronaldo has to be left in a McDonald's a long way from any football ground if Brazil are to look like WC winners. Well done Neill and Emerton- excellent performances!

Blushing- I had got the Group A/B matches mixed up so we could well get Germany in the last 16 and something less intimidating in the QF. Still, we might see teams trying to throw matches when the last Group stage matches are played as countries try to avoid a half of the draw of death if other results throw up some unexpected second places eg Oz ahead of Brazil.

It looked like it was really buzzing in the stadium. America did get lucky to the extent that the og was straight out of the Hayden Mullins school of defending and just as hilarious. Is it true that was your only shot on goal? Anyway, there is a difference between prediction and sentiment- I was cheering for OOSA last night.

If Japan play this one the way they played Australia, they should win.

Just spotted that if the tables remain unchanged, England's route to the final will be: last 16 England v Germany QF plays the winner of Argentina v Mexico and waiting in the SF will be the winner of Italy v Brazil because they will presumably have beaten the winner of S Korea v Tunisia. Get your money on Spain to win the World Cup!

The red cards for the American players were debatable to harsh but the missed penalty and some of the other decisions against the Americans were truly bad. Have to say Italy were awful and could well fail to hold on for the point they need against the Czechs to qualify. Well done to the USA for getting at least a point (would have been three with an OK ref) but I think Ghana will win the last game in the Group.

At the moment Poland, Costa Rica and Paraguay are such dark horses that the lights have gone out.

What a fantastic game- really enjoyed it. The Czechs had no answer for the combination of physicality and ball playing prowess of Ghana. Give me the choice of ANY COUNTRY to be the coach of at this stage, I would pick Ghana. "All" they need is more discipline between 15 and 30 yards from goal and to stick the front-runners' heads in ice buckets and they could beat anyone in Germany.

Fabulous rearguard fight by the USA- well done chaps! Italy had bought that ref- no messing. McBride is crap though isn't he?

Or giving up trying to post after the site had collapsed.

This thread is excellent news. All the fans in Germany are behaving themselves.

"They" seem to be doing a pretty good job of making sure we cannot watch it on the PC. Nothing working for me today sorry.

Well that was a bit emphatic. Mind you Serbia and Montenegro are so poor, they don't exist anymore. Compared with England facing the might of T&T, the Argies were fooling around with S&M.

What is all this moaning about? I saw the last 15 minutes and England were OK. The Swedish game will be interesting- can England begin to pick their game up against a half-decent European side? If they can, there might be hope yet. Neither Germany nor Ecuador should be capable of troubling potential WC winners in terms of last 16 opposition.

Hang-on, they cannot have played yet; I am supposed to be writing the preview for this one!

Hmm, it seems pot luck whether a post goes onto this new fangled MB or not. Anyway, for what its worth, Italy will record a routine 3-0 win over oosa as the Italians call the USA. Back to this topic, I haven't found a proxy that convinces the Beeb that I am in the UK yet. So for anyone outside the UK, go to http://www.project2046.com Make a note of the channels showing the game then go to the TVU media player and click on the channel(s) listed by 2046 as showing the game. You get pretty dumb commentary if it is coming off ESPN and more tickers and crawlers than Bloomberg TV but at least you get to see the sunshine/shadow contrast in technicolo(u)r! Oh that's excellent, it told me my post had failed so I put it on again and I find I've sandwiched Jan.

Hmm, it seems pot luck whether a post goes onto this new fangled MB or not. Anyway, for what its worth, Italy will record a routine 3-0 win over oosa as the Italians call the USA. Back to this topic, I haven't found a proxy that convinces the Beeb that I am in the UK yet. So for anyone outside the UK, go to http://www.project2046.com Make a note of the channels showing the game then go to the TVU media player and click on the channel(s) listed by 2046 as showing the game. You get pretty dumb commentary if it is coming off ESPN and more tickers and crawlers than Bloomberg TV but at least you get to see the sunshine/shadow contrast in technicolo(u)r!

Germany will not impress but Poland will fall short and fail to embarass the hosts even though they face instant elimination in this one if, as seems likely, Ecuador beat Costa Rica.