As Euro 2008 looms, I am in the bizarre position of almost enjoying the fact that the England team are sunning themselves on a beach instead of getting in the way of the real action. Back in 1950 England were beaten 1-0 by the USA national side and according to the Times, a journalist receiving the result via telegraph machine in London presumed that someone had made a spelling mistake and that the score had in fact been 1-10. Although this scoreline may have been slightly lucky the 6-3 defeat to Hungary a few years later was most certainly not. Again the English press were in disbelief that anybody to defeat the great country that invented the game. 50 years on I'm not sure things have moved on as much as they should have. Every tournament the press tell us that we should be challengeing  for the trophy and that our big players will carry us through. Before the 2006 world cup, when Rooney had his metatarsal scare (another great English footballing tradition) I heard one pundit say that if Rooney was fit we were guarenteed to win the world cup. Although this was far form a common belief it does sum up the press hype perfectly. Wayne Rooney is not even the best attacking player at Manchester United. I think we all know who that is, however I don't think he is quite as good as Tevez. And yet somehow he is good enough to win the World cup single handedly- a feat Ronaldinho was unable to acheive. I believe that our main problem is a lack of skill with the ball on the ground. We need players who can take the opposition on by dribbling and playing short simple passes and through balls- its too easy to smack the ball in the general direction of Crouch's head and it doesn't work. The one player we have who is capable of doing this regularly is Joe Cole. The press and scousers both rave about Steven Gerard and call him a world class player. I'll admit that he is very good at running in a straight line with the ball and if he isn't tackled then he can kick it high and hard at another player or he can kick it high and hard towards the goal. The amount of time he gives the ball away in good position is horrific. If only he would just play a short simple ball or try and take on a player with a nice step over (I never thought I'd say that!). Having said all of this I think that I saw an improvement in the two recent friendlies and I think that Cappello is definately the man to install some technical quality. Also I would beg Fabio to keep Beckham in the team for the time being because his ability to create assists is second to no one in the English team.  

With my rather extended rant over I was wondering what people thought about who will win Euro 2008. My money is on the Germans as they have managed to avoid nearly all of the major teams in their half of the draw. Italy, France and the Netherlands have all got a chance but when it comes to big names espeacially from the Premiership I think Spain are the team to beat. They won't win it though because Spain never win anything. Another possibility is that one of the Eastern European teams will emerge- possibly Russia. I'd love to know what people think.