Germany 4 England 1

Well there's a surprise then!  Who would have thought England couldn't play football?

I have to be honest and admit that I gave up watching (with any hope of an England victory) after only 13 minutes.  OK, they had possession for a little while but the writing was on the wall when they only played passes across the back four.  Every pass that they dared to play out of their own half either went astray or was in actual fact a punt in the desperate hope that someone would catch it and belt it into the net.

Let's analyse the defence, shall we ...

... oh no, sorry!  I forgot ... we didn't really have one, did we?

Mid-field was, as in the other games, crowded.  It seemed very much as if the English were afraid of the flanks and they huddled in the centre of the pitch searching for a bit of comfort or at the very least some sort of chaos that would give each of them an excuse that it would be "someone else's" fault should the Germans manage to score (which they did, obviously).

John Terry (experienced man?), Glenn Johnson (Over rated) and Gareth Barry were out of position on each of Germany's goals and were all guilty of some dreadful passing throughout the game.

Gerrard  and Lampard were again predictable (Gerrard coming into mid-field from the left and being unable to kick with his left foot, Lampard with poor control and passing [one good free kick though])

Dafoe and Rooney didn't seem to be playing in the same game!  For all their running and ranting (Rooney) they didn't get into any scoring situations.

Milner and Johnson (again) were dreadful as far as crossing the ball was concerned.

At the end of the day our players were not up to it.  They are all good individual players (to a point) but I reckon that they only appear to be as good as they seem due the the quality of the foreign players that surround them in their premiership clubs.

I think next time it might be better to pick an entirely English team out of the lower divisions; a team that plays together week in, week out, and make them OUR National Team!

Let's face it ... they couldn't do any worse than the over paid Prima Donna's we sent to the finals this time around, would they!

And in case anyone would like to know ... I bet on Germany to win and also have Germany as 'my team' in the "Other Place's" sweepstake!  So I wasn't at all upset by the result!

Eat my shorts Mr. Cappello!