The first thing I noticed, rather sadly, about the England team was that David Beckham was playing in short sleeves. I don’t remember Beckham playing in short sleeves previously so it said something about the heat. Maybe it’s Beckham’s David Tennant haircut that gave him the extra ability.
From the initial swearing in the tunnel before the game England were fired up. Fired up seemed initially to mean complacency for me and it led to a few incidents such as the Ecuador chance that Cole deflected onto the bar. Then Ferdinand and Hargreaves went for the same ball, Frank Lampard had some wayward passes, the final ball was lacking.
England’s goal came from a set piece. When I saw Beckham shake his head at someone in the box I knew he was going to shoot. Cracking free-kick. Made up for Lampard’s numerous attempts that we not struck well. England has chances to kill the game off but they were not taken. Against Ecuador, who where poor, that is something that was ‘good enough’; against the Netherlands or Portugal it’s not going to be good enough.
Grinding out results like this will take England so far. Wayne Rooney playing the whole game and effectively being worth two strikers up front was awesome. Michael Carrick was better than Frank Lampard. Gerrard ran his legs off. Aaron Lennon was brillliant for the 10 minutes he had on the pitch. This is what we need.
Come on England!