Phil from Halifax phoned in the middle of the night (10.30 on a Sunday morning is the middle of the night!) to remind me to get right behind England against Ecuador. So I told him I'll be giving it ‘C'mon Ecuador', although to be perfectly honest, there was no way Sven's men should lose this one.
We went off on a driving tour for the day so we watched the game in Auchterarder, the first half in the Golf Hotel until a wean in a Sellick top started to annoy me and the second half in the Niblick, where I had the misfortune to sit beside a couple of English holidaymakers. One joker was getting upset with the ref, muttering about it being out of order that a South American was in charge. Whereabouts in South America is Belgium?
After Saturday's excellent entertainment from Germany, Argentina and Mexico, England v Ecuador was dire stuff. Ecuador made more of a game of it than I expected and it would have been very interesting to see how the English would have reacted if Carlos Tenorio's early effort had scraped under the crossbar. But the South Americans are no more than an average team and it exposed England as the overrated lot they are that they made such heavy weather of booking their place in the quarter-finals.
A trademark Beckham free-kick did the trick and I'm inclined to think it was a pretty soft award in the first place. But hey, far be it for me to question the competence of a referee.
England have now gone as far as they could reasonably be expected to go. There are no more diddy teams to be rolled over, although I would much prefer them to be playing Holland on Saturday instead of Portugal.
What can be said about the farce which was Sunday night's match in Nuremberg? When Valentin Ivanov showed a couple of early yellow cards, I reckoned there was no chance of the game finishing with 22 players on the park (not even if Graham Poll was in charge!)…but even I couldn't have foreseen it turning into a 9-a-side pantomime. What could have been a classic match was spoiled by yet another card-happy clown.
Maniche won it with an excellent first half strike, thanks to some good work from Pauleta, but I fancied the Dutch to hit back. I loved their change strip by the way and wouldn't mind seeing the Gers adopt something similar. But there was never any flow to the game and, once the yellow cards turned to reds, the Portuguese just pulled everyone behind the ball and choked the game.
The best thing about the game were the toasties laid on by Dave and Frances at the Letham Hotel. Staying in the village for a few days, I looked forward to having another wee nibble on Monday when I parked my arse in the bar for Italy v Australia. Oh dear, it appears the freebies are for weekends only. Miserable bassas!
The Aussies certainly did well to hold their own against the Azzuri, with whom Rino Gattuso was again outstanding, and when Materazzi was red-carded (harshly IMHO) early in the second half they had a great chance to pull off a shock. But they didn't seem to go for it with any great conviction and paid the price when Totti rattled home a rather dodgy injury time penalty.
It seemed like all the glamour was being sucked out of the tournament when Switzerland and Ukraine later served up a goalless stalemate. If they were still playing yet, they still wouldn't have scored and the Swiss even contrived to fire blanks in the penalty shoot-out, going down 3-0. Ukraine will have to play a lot better if they are to have any hope of beating Italy at the weekend.
The knock-out games have not been the feast of football I'd expected but I'm confident it will be different for Brazil v Ghana and France v Spain…
just so long as the refs don't spoil it all again!
LITTLE BOY BLUE