England, Mexico, etc.

So far, the last games in the group phase haven't produced nearly the drama as they have done in the recent past. Groups A & C were over after two rounds, and the underdogs in B & D--Trinidad and Angola--just didn't have enough quality to come up with the goods when they needed to. (The case of Angola is particularly galling, because I had my "Angola Miracle" headline all ready. Sure, I could save it for the future, but the aural pun on Angela Merkel just doesn't work if the Cup's not played in Germany.)

Consequently, England, Sweden and Mexico have gotten through to the next round despite each of them spending much of the tournament playing like ass. For instance, England played precisely one good half against Sweden, but they squandered that by some really comical defending and general lassitude in the second half. Now they face a knockout stage without Michael Owen, who tore an ACL in the first minute against the Swedes. Sven-Goran Erikkson is taking heat for having brought too many holding midfielders and not enough strikers, and rightfully so.

The bright side for England is that Hargreaves played well as a holding midfielder, allowing Lampard and then Gerrard to play their natural attacking game. My guess is this means that Sven will go 4-5-1, with Rooney as the lone front man. What he should do is play Aaron Lennon, take off Lampard, who's looked blah in the group stage, and give Beckham license to roam. Too often, Beckham was isolated on the right side, with his teammates not finding him with the ball. Having Lennon over there will open up space for Beckham to hang back and distribute, which is what happened when Lennon was brought on vs. T&T.


Mexico looked good at times during their 2-1 loss to Portugal, but there were moments of unmitigated stupid: Bravo's penalty miss, Marquez's handball, playing Marquez in the the middle in the first place, etc. They were lucky a better team than Angola wasn't there; Ghana or Ivory Coast would have gotten out of this group. And it's really galling for me as a US fan to know that Mexico won the seed of this group just over the US. We could have gone 1-1-1 and played poorly just as well as the Mexicans can.

In any case, the real drama is going to happen tomorrow with groups E through G.