Oh England, My Lionheart

Ok, so we won our first match in that World Cup thing. England 1, Paraguay 0. We hardly deserved to win. The only goal, a Beckham free kick that was helpfully deflected into the net by the Paraguayan captain Carlos Gamarra in the fourth minute, was a superb starter. But it was all downhill from there. England were all over Paraguay in the first half, but nobody could be arsed to score another goal. Paraguay were somewhat more on the case in the second half, and it was nailbiting stuff.

I hate this. England seems to believe that a 1-0 victory is good enough. I disagree. We want goalfests, we want excitement. We don't want to see these outrageously highly-paid chaps not doing their job (I define their job as scoring as many goals as possible, not the boring Eriksson definition of just score one more than the other team).

And I seriously hated the Brazilian referee: he looked like some kind of vampire, he had more oil on his hair than Saudi Arabia pumps in a month and he was totally biased against some of the England players (especially the midget Crouch). This guy made free with the yellow cards for perfectly acceptable tackles while ignoring the blatant prima-donna-ish acting of the SAmericans.

I've just read a piece in the online Grauniad - Eriksson and Beckham said they were crap because it was too hot.

To quote Gaspode The Wonder Dog: Pull one of the others, it's got bells on.

Sheesh.