±«Óãtv

It is easy for people like you and me to say, life goes on. But for thousands of passionate supporters, life has no meaning after them were defeated. Because of the exit of Brazil, Brazilian supporters of India are just trying to find a way to console each other. In Bangladesh, Argentine supporters are keeping the flags of
Argentina lower as if someone had died.
from too much grief. Really, world
cup football is much more than a game. You cannot find such a high level of
excitement for any other event. Not even for Olympics or European Cup Football.

Too bad for Brazil but this is a moment for the French to savour. The French nation has finally made headlines for the right reasons after a gap of 6 years(Euro 2000)

JK

First things first - of course England will be missed when the compie is on Europe and the last 4 are all from that part of the World. Just the beer takings alone would be enough for the Germans.

As for being sad about Brazil - they have to learn that you cannot just turn up and win - there must be some tactics involved against the better sides.

Aggentina flattered to deceive - they were a good unit without being great. Also a serious mistake not to have Messi playing from the start.

England - we will always be box to box triers. In the right conditions and with sympathetic refereeing maybe they will score in the big games. Rooney needs to be re-examined - not his foot, his head. Lampard, Beckham, Neville should all now be dropped by McClaren if he wants to start building something more polished. It can be done witness what Venables built at Euro 2006.

As for journo's thinking we had a golden team - who exactly? Lampard? Gerrard? - Both effort men - no real class, as this WC proved. Beckham - a one trick wonder for so long. Ferdinand more limited than we had hoped distribution wise... Think again - Sven deliberatley screwed the squad selection (Mr Samuels, take a bow) and then watched what he knew to be average footballers (on the World stage) get lucky in 3 games - it would have been 4 against a poor Portugal side but for Rooney's moment of madness....

McClaren might be better? Would like to know where - he coached this lot. What now, Downing in for Cole - Southgate back as Captain? Perhaps Malcolm Christie could do a turn. Hope you prove me wrong, Steve but fear you will be asking Katie Dereham to write you a nice resgination speech after the Euros....

"It can be done witness what Venables built at Euro 2006."

You sir, quite obviously do not know what ure talking about.

Dear Nigel,

the attitude presented in your post is exactly what has disappointed me about the English during this World Cup. I know that this concerns only a fraction of the English and I hope those who disagree with the blog entry's view, too, don't take offence.

The England team (along with 27 teams of other nations) didn't make it through to the last 4 for whatever reasons. Tough, but that's how it is, sorry, get used to it. However, instead of picking yourself up again after some decent mourning - you can only cope by questioning the entire and by downplaying the skills and qualities of the remaining teams.

Publicly and freely available to everybody capable of reading, Germany's coach Klinsman explained that he used the pre-WC games to experiment what works best. From what it looks like, he got the mix right just in time for the actual World Cup. Somewhere else it read, onece the tournament has commenced, it's too late for experiments (did someone say 'Walcott'?? ...). What is it about you English that you need to be so self-centred and as soon as you're out of a world tournament you not only lose interest but also have to devalidate it? I know England is an island but still, you're part of the European Union. Sometimes, I wish that would mean something to people not only employed in Brussels.

teutonicaUK:

You're so right.

What a poor piece of assessment by Nigel - "I don't think any team has a divine right to play here anymore."
I would never have thought a ±«Óãtv staff member could be so blindfolded.
Utterly ridiculous. It is an insult to so many good efforts by quite a number of teams from all over.

Living on a foggy island off of Europe, huh? If you ain't got a clue, why don't you go to some boring cricket event and ... excuse me ... yaaaaaaahhhhwwn

"Mediocre for several years" is not a valid argument. They could have been mediocre for centuries that it wouldn't matter. Germany has now the right coach for the job and they never lacked in talented players. Unless you have a Pelé, and it has yet to be born his successor, it all comes down to a good coach in the end. I thought you english would have learned that lesson by now.

I have to agree about Portugal. They played so much better in the last 2 European championships. And yet, I think they'll win this world cup. Nobody expected Greece to win Euro 2004, after all. All chanting at the time about the host's victory and then what a turn-off...

As for Brazil, they didn't deserve the least to be in the semi-finals after their poor performance against France. They must have been the most hyped team of the tourney (England was only hyped in England). So I say good riddance. Of course the brazilians in Lisbon would kill me if they heard me say such a thing, there's a large brazilian community here and they've actually been tremendous supporters of Portugal. They miss Scolari, now more than ever.

Perhaps we should tear down Marquês de Pombal's statue in one of our main squares and replace it with a statue of Big Phil if he brings the Cup home, he he he.

In a way it’s actually good that the likes of Brazil, Argentina, Spain, Netherlands and England are out because that means they will prepare better (hopefully) for the next tournament in 2010. I think Brazil, for example, will have more meaningful friendlies before the tournament and not the kick abouts they had this time.

Apart from Germany, the other three teams in the semis failed to reach the quarterfinals last time around and now they have reached the semis which is good for them. The World Cup doesn't have to be so predictable.

Former England skipper, Terry Butcher in his comments in ±«Óãtv sport has stated:

They (refering to the Inglish team) missed a big chance against Portugal because the route was opening up.Portugal will not win the world cup and yet they got past England"

This type of statements only shows that the Inglish have not changed.Their arrogance and blind and stupid preconcepts of superiority still dominates their thinking process.This only denotes their racist view of the peninsular peoples. Sorry to tell you English skipper, the time you dominated the world his over.Whenever you prevailed you preyed on the weak and divided.That time is over.You are not better than anybody else.You have to work to get results. The piracy times you were famous for are over.No more free gold on the blood of peoples.Portugal might not win the cup but what makes you think that you are better than the Portuguese? You should go back to your little island, stop crying and leave the rest of the world in peace.We do not need your crying-baby behavior.
J.M. CALIFORNIA. USA.

@Jim Medeiros. We are not "peninsular" as that would mean we are attached somehow to continental Europe. We are simply "insular".
PS Any relation to Glen?

@English fan:

Good on you for taking the comment in the right spirit...
But for most of rest of the world your team is a bunch of overhyped players and your media sore losers...( as can be seen on the attack on Ronaldo to deflect criticism from their own failure again )

And right from the start you people have kept writing Portugal off...
Keep doing that ... We seem to be doing very well as a result of that....

I wish the media would stop with the insults to the Portuguese....Get over it. England did not perform to the standard expected...Portugal aren't either....but they are through...
As usual the English look to blame everyone else apart from them.....

Does life go on? I'm not sure it does. This is an existential dilemma.

Dear Nigel,
after all this time in Germany you are still surprised that many Germans support England (as long as they don't play Germany)? The football rivalry is quite one-sided; for Germans, the arch-rival has been, and still is, Holland.

Dear Nigel: An observation from an American football (not soccer) fan. Watching as many of the games as I could I was reminded of the american football phrase "A good offense is your best defense". Everybody, and I mean everybody in this World Cup is afraid to lose. They pack the defense in, they hold the ball too long, they don't make accurate passes, they don't intercept passes, they don't trap (like in basketball), and my youngest daughter takes worse hits from her older siblings around the house. All the players want is a free kick or a penalty kick. Want to put good players on the field go to your local clubs. I'll bet those guys play "no blood, no foul".

hmmmm
i think it is plainly obvious from this blog that english people have a much higher expectation than the actual reality.over biased media have built this team from being a good one into being world superstars..john motson and mark lawrenson said during the first game we have the best midfield on the planet..i mean cmon be serious..gary lineker was looking to blame everyone else on the planet other than rooney for his diabolical stamping on the portugese player and shearers scandalous comments that rooney should slap ronaldo just goes to prove my whole point.

I firmly believe that even englands mediocre performances were half brought about by the fact they were told and believed they are the unbeatable and all they had to do was turn up to win.maybe its time for these so called pundits to take a closer look at themselves and how they go about building up englands chances before euro 2008.sadly i fear most of them will learn nothing and speak from there pockets rather than from there beliefs.

And i could not write this without thinking back to ian wright who really should never be allowed on tv as a pundit again hes nomore than a supporter with not a thing to contribute and his face was just aching on saturday night after that defeat and was a pleasure for us looking in from the outside.

The football clubs and nations which generally win the trophies, with a few rare exceptions, are the ones which play collectively well as a team within a clearly defined system where everyone knows their responsibilities. It is rare that a team of so called stars blends well within a system created around them. Mourinho at Chelsea knew this well when he won the Champions League with Porto. Managers like Hiddink, Beenhakker and of course Scolari also follow this ethic with ruthless efficiency. England probably had the more technically gifted group of players on the field on saturday but they did not play as a team. Portugal did and deserved to win. Lets stop blaming everyone else except ourselves. The media hyped the team up beyond logic or reason so the expectation levels were out of control, we had a manager who lost the plot in terms of selection and tactics and lastly we have a domestic league which favours foreign players at the expense of the development of young english talent. Our world cup win in 1966 was an aberration and gave the nation expectations which the quality of domestic football cannot, nor ever will, match until there is a radical revolution in the way football is governed in this country.

Jom Medeiros: You seem to have completely misunderstood the Terry Butcher opinion piece, and couldn't have picked a more inappropriate article for your rabid anti-England speil if you had tried.

How did you miss the entire first half of the article full of quotes like:

"Why should we be proud of the fact that we have one star on our shirt representing the fact that we reached one World Cup final 40 years ago?"

"We have become all Billy Big Time and become too big for our boots, and yet we have got nothing to shout about because we have done nothing. This is what annoys me."

"We have no right to be as confident or arrogant about our football as we are. It has been not been anywhere near good enough."

Please, a little less of the unfouneded slurs on a whole nation, and try to keep it about football.

For the record, I think that England were better than Portugal on the day.