While it sounds like the play was impressive, a 1-0 scoreline isn’t exactly safe. I’m glad that Defoe was the scorer – I thought he should have been played more in the other two games – and Milner’s cross to set him up was classy. Milner was chastised after the first game, when he was taken off early, but I think he was just unfit and it was probably the wrong decision to start with him.
Joe Cole, the alleged hero of the hour, didn’t do a lot with his late stint, which presumably will put the kibosh on any more listening to Terry’s advice.
The USA had, like England, the better of their game, and finally managed to get their winner in the death. Dempsey had several chances to score, and Altidore punted an easy chance over the bar. But overall, the USA did enough to top the group, and given that they had a goal unfairly disallowed in each of their last games they deserved to end up clearly ahead rather than just beating England on goals scored.
Indeed, for all England’s apparent dominance today, the failure to get a second goal means that they will face the winner of group D (Germany would be most likely) rather than the runner up. Looking further ahead, if England get past the next opposition, they’d face the winner of the Argentina-Mexico game. Urk!
Hopefully though, Ghana will beat Germany and Australia will pound Serbia into submission 🙂
The middle of the line 
Leave a Reply