Time to revise the Guinness Book of Records because it looks like the longest a human can hold their breath is about 11 days.  Ever since that disappointing result against the USA there has been the worry that England wouldn’t get through the group stage of the World Cup, which only got worse after the Algeria game. Now we have scraped through and the simultaneous release of breath across the country probably affected barometers.OK, so it all means that we have to face Germany next, but getting knocked out by them is at least respectable and expected: coming home because of an inability to beat Algeria would have been as hard as…  well just ask the French and Italians what that feels like.

I haven’t really been enjoying this World Cup as much as I hoped.  Most of the opening matches were dull, and so were a lot of the second games.   Best game so far has to be Germany v Ghana and I can’t believe how many England supporters are saying they wish we had got the ‘easy’ tie against Ghana in the knockout stages.  Ghana didn’t look a pushover to me.

It is all very well being patriotic and wanting your team to win, but honestly, do we think supporters of any other team would be afraid of playing us after seeing our three games?  I hope that we can get a result against Germany, but so far it is not looking good.  All these stories about the England team finding their mojo, but they didn’t really look that impressive against Slovenia.

All those positive press stories about England’s performance are just a case of Emperor Fabio’s new clothes at the moment.  To actually stand a chance we need Rooney to actually turn up to the next game.

A few random thoughts:

Why does the USA strip look like International Rescue?

Didn’t Rob Green look a lot like Damon Albarn in the first game?

Isn’t it a little insensitive for supporters to turn up at a game against an Arab team wearing crusaders’ costumes?