Author Archives: Mike

Fab Announces Provisional Squad

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OK, pay attention at the back, here’s the provisional 30 man England squad:

Goalkeepers: Robert Green (West Ham), Joe Hart (Manchester City), David James (Portsmouth)

Defenders: Leighton Baines (Everton), Jamie Carragher (Liverpool), Ashley Cole (Chelsea), Michael Dawson (Spurs), Rio Ferdinand (Manchester United), Glen Johnson (Liverpool), Ledley King (Spurs), John Terry (Chelsea), Matt Upson (West Ham), Steven Warnock (Aston Villa)

Midfielders: Gareth Barry (Manchester City), Michael Carrick (Manchester United), Joe Cole (Chelsea), Steven Gerrard (Liverpool), Tom Huddlestone (Spurs), Adam Johnson (Manchester City), Frank Lampard (Chelsea), Aaron Lennon (Spurs), James Millner (Aston Villa), Scott Parker (West Ham), Theo Walcott (Arsenal), Shaun Wright-Phillips (Manchester City)

Strikers: Darren Bent (Sunderland), Peter Crouch (Spurs), Jermain Defoe (Spurs), Emile Heskey (Aston Villa), Wayne Rooney (Manchester United)

Before we go any further, the following players who have been in England squads over the past year or so are missing: Gabriel Agbonglahor, Wayne Bridge, Wes Brown, Gary Cahill, Carlton Cole, Stewart Downing, Ben Foster, Jermaine Jenas, Joeleon Lescott, Gary Neville, Paul Robinson, Ryan Shawcross and Ashley Young.

The main surprise is the inclusion of Jamie Carragher (no, not the bloke from Shameless), who hasn’t played for England for three years after falling out with Steve McClaren. Obviously Rio Ferdinand’s fitness and John Terry’s ‘interesting’ form since his misdemeanours entered the public domain mean that we need cover in defence and Carragher’s inclusion makes sense; he’ll battle it out with Michael Dawson and Ledley King, but to be honest Dawson is the best long term prospect we have in central defence and I’ll be amazed if Dawson doesn’t make the final 23.

Dawson and Manchester City midfielder Adam Johnson are the only uncapped players named in the squad; quite a few of names above have been through this before. Interestingly, Capello also tried to talk Paul Scholes out of his self imposed international exile: he was having none of it.

Our next opponents – Mexico – were in action last night, beating Senegal 1-0 at Soldier Field, Chicago (home of Da Bears!):  the winning goal was scored by Guadalajara’s Alberto Medina.

David Beckham’s injury woes have been documented elsewhere so it’s no surprise that he’s missing: but he’ll be joined by some famous names from our chief rivals: Ronaldinho and Adriano have been left out by Brazil and Francesco Totti (who seems to be single handedly keeping Roma in the race for the Serie A title) won’t be playing for Italy this summer.

Apologies for missing this yesterday – don’t worry Fabio, we’ll be attempting to provide our own player ratings, which will probably appear immediately after each game and may be heavily influenced by one or more of the major breweries.

New Zealand & Japan Name Squads

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While the coaches of the other 30 nations taking part in the World Cup next month are still mulling over their squads, New Zealand’s Ricki Herbert and Japan’s Takeshi Okada have already named their 23 man squads.

New Zealand’s All Whites contains six British based players: captain Ryan Nelsen (Blackburn Rovers), fellow defender Tommy Smith (Ipswich) and strikers Rory Fallon (Plymouth Argyle), Chris Killen (Middlesbrough) and Chris Wood (West Brom). Midfielder Michael McGlinchey plays for Motherwell in the Scottish Premier League.

Interestingly, Japan’s squad – which will be facing England in a couple of weeks so we’ll look at them in depth at that point – includes only four players based outside the J-League.

Quite a few friendlies featuring qualifiers this week: Mexico face Senegal at the Azteca in the early hours of tomorrow morning UK time; they also play Angola on Friday, the same day that Germany play Malta.

Stay tuned: tomorrow we’ll be looking at our 30 man squad whilst trying to watch the second leg of the Nottingham Forest v Blackpool play off semi final. At time of writing it looks as if it will include a middle aged man nicknamed ‘Calamity’ in goal, several injured centre backs and a German with a Canadian accent who has played about five minutes in the Premiership this season. Oh and I almost forgot: our talismanic striker has a groin strain.

It wouldn’t be the World Cup if everyone was fit though, would it?

By the way – Chelsea 8, Wigan 0? That’s a baseball score. Wigan should be ashamed of themselves.

One Night In Turin

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4th July 1990: I’d like to say I remember it like yesterday, but it’s coming up to 20 years ago now which is genuinely scary. After a dreadful group stage, England beat Belgium with David Platt’s goal with the last kick of the game in the second round and generously allowed Cameroon to take the lead in the quarter final with under half an hour left before finishing them off in injury time.

The win set up the mythical semi final with West Germany; despite giving away the lead again to one of the most ridiculous goals I’ve ever seen, hitting the post 57 times (or so it seemed) and having arguably the most skillfull player England has ever produced booked for causing a German to fall over and roll about, England very nearly made it to the final for the first time in 24 years.

The combination of two missed penalties and the ‘Nessun Dorma’ theme tune used by the BBC plus my outrage that the Beeb didn’t scrap the rest of the evening’s television traumatised me to the point where I couldn’t watch the video tape for a decade; I managed to watch most of it once but I’ve never watched it all the way to the end.

So in a way, the release of One Night In Turin this week will hopefully provide some kind of personal catharsis to those of us of a certain age:  the film is launched with a special premiere supported by the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation at the Gateshead Metro Centre, which includes a live Q&A session that will be screened simultaneously accross the UK via the Arts Alliance network. The session will hosted by Jim Rosenthal with the film’s director James Erskine, Pete Davies (author of ‘All Played Out‘) and some of the Italia 90 squad (the most recent confirmed player is Stuart Pearce); if you want any questions answered (who was Chris Waddle’s barber for example) or want to find the nearest cinema showing the film in your area, please go to www.onenightinturin.com; the Arts Alliance Network can be found here and the Sir Bobby Robson foundation is here.

We’re looking forward to the film at 11 Lions; I’m planning to watch the whole videotape…but only under the right circumstances.

See if you can guess what they might be.

On Tuesday, ‘One Night In Turin’ is released with a special premiere with the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation at the Gateshead Metro Centre, which includes a live Q&A session that will be screened simultaneously accross the UK via the Arts Alliance network. The session will hosted by Jim Rosenthal with the film’s director James Erskine, Pete Davies (author of ‘All Played Out’) and some of the Italia 90 squad; anyone watching will be able to either text questions to ( ) or send them via ( )
To find the nearest cinema showing to yo, go to www.onenightinturin.com; the Arts Alliance Network can be found at www.artsalliancemedia.com and the Sir Bobby Robson foundation is at Sirbobbyrobsonfoundation.org.uk

Another rumour…

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About to watch Man U v Spurs (not featuring either Wayne Rooney or Rio Ferdinand but with a chance for Michael Dawson to make a really strong claim to be called up for the World Cup) and doing a bit of pre-match crawling around the internet when I came across this.

I’m not going to jump to any conclusions but let’s see what – if anything – the Sunday papers make of it. Interestingly enough, I’m going to watch Derby County this afternoon.

Ref Watch

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Don’t say we didn’t warn you: you may already know that Martin Hansson of Sweden (the ref who missed the Thierry Henry handball) is on the official refs list for the World Cup Finals, but after watching Roberto Rossetti of Italy referee the Bayern Munich v Lyon Champions League semi final this evening, he may be one that England may need to keep an eye on. Two red cards: a justifiable straight one for Bayern’s Frank Ribery but worryingly a second yellow for Jeremy Toulalan of Lyon – for the type of challenge that goes unpunished in football matches up and down the UK.

Fernando Torres Out For Six Weeks

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Difficult not to feel some sympathy with Spain, given our record for pre-tournament injuries, especially when the player involved could have been one of the stars of the World Cup…but Fernando Torres is set to miss six weeks after undergoing surgery for a torn cartilage in his right knee.

Weirdly, Torres was one of the first Panini stickers I got with my free album today – so Javier Mascherano, Michael Essien, Didier Drogba, Steven Pienaar and Rio Ferdinand might be also be cursed.

Incidentally, having watched almost the entire Spurs v Chelsea game last night (including Drogba’s bizarre ‘groin injury’ performance after half time) I’m now convinced that Michael Dawson of Spurs needs to be in the England squad. The problem for Dawson is that we only have two friendlies left…against Mexico at Wembley on Monday May 24th and versus Japan at the UPC Arena (in Graz, Austria) on Sunday May 30th.

In Case You Were Wondering…

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This is the full version of the song that The Sun is using for their current ad featuring the England badge where the second World Championship star appears:

If you take the audio tour of Graceland, it’s also the song that’s played as you enter the Meditation Garden, where Elvis, his parents and his paternal grandmother are buried. There’s also a memorial marker for Elvis’ stillborn twin brother, Jesse Garon Presley.

It’s Not Just Our Players…

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The fallout from Arsenal’s midweek UCL game against Barcelona continues: now Arsene Wenger and French head coach Raymond Domenech are getting all livid over the injury that has ended William Gallas’ season. Wenger’s argument for risking Gallas is that it’s Arsenal that pay Gallas’ wages not France, which is fair enough I suppose although I can imagine Wenger sulking publicly if an Arsenal player was injured playing in an international. In any case, Domenech is not universally popular in France (or Ireland for that matter) and Les Blues are currently about eighth favourite for the tournament; if France fail spectacularly and Arsenal don’t win the Premiership this season, maybe Wenger and Domenech could swap jobs.

Oh and it’s Man Utd v Chelsea in a couple of hours in case anyone forgot. Hopefully no-one else from the England squad gets injured.

Injury Update

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Fabio Capello has addressed the problems caused by the injuries to England’s key defenders in a radical and unexpected way, by calling up lower league defenders Leigh Bromby of Leeds United and Mike Edwards of Notts County for an end of season England training squad. Edwards was recommended to Capello by new Ivory Coast manager Sven-Goran Eriksson whilst Bromby came to his attention after a conversation in a pub car park with Bryan Robson, the current manager of the Thai national team. Bromby’s defensive qualities plus his long throw (known as the ‘Brombomb’ to Leeds fans) would no doubt provide ammunition for Peter Crouch.

In other news, Wayne Rooney’s injury isn’t as bad as it might have been: minor ligament damage, which will keep him out of the Manchester United team for the top of the table clash with Chelsea tomorrow. However…Sid Fibreglass is out for the rest of the domestic season after picking up an injury during Arsenal’s dramatic draw against Barcelona in the Champions League on Wednesday and current thinking is that he has a chance of making the Spanish squad for the finals.