Tag: Ukraine

Repeat the mantra after me. It’s a results-based business. It’s a results-based business. Roy Hodgson must be thanking his lucky stars that this is the case this evening after England misplaced, mistimed and misadventured their way to a goalless draw in Kiev this evening, a result that does leave their qualification for next summer’s World Cup finals in Brazil – although how much reassurance this may offer England supporters who watch this match through the gaps between their fingers may come to depend upon whether a factory reset can be applied to this rag tag assortment of journeymen and ne’er-do-wells in order to get them to learn the basics of the game all over again within the next couple of months. It’s not about a sense of inflated expectation, this, by the way. You have to be pushing fifty years old in order to remember an England team that came some way towards being world class – and, before any angries of Tunbridge Wells start licking ther lips and sharpening their pencils, England were the fourth best team at the worst World Cup finals of all in 1990 and went through distinct phases of riding their luck on home ground in the European Championships six years later – so there aren’t many of us under a certain age who have had any just cause to get ideas above our...

There was a point yesterday when it seemed as if history was deemed to repeat itself yet again. As Olof Mellbergs second goal-ward shot on goal made Joe Harts net swell for the second time in ten minutes, the feeling that England were deflating to expectation was inescapable. We had been here before, of course. In the cauldron of noise that was the Rasunda in Stockholm twenty years ago, Sweden came from behind to knock England out of the competition at the first hurdle. Ten years later, they were back, coming from behind to force a draw in their first match of the World Cup finals. And in 2006 another late Swedish equaliser denied England three points in their final group match in Cologne. England, as we have been told approximately nine times every day since the draw for these finals was made, hadn’t managed to beat Sweden in a competitive match since 1968. The stars were aligning against England yet again. Somehow, though, this time England contrived somehow to pull an iron from the fire and conjured two goals – one a little lucky, one a tiny moment of improvised brilliance – to win the match and now go into their final group match against the co-hosts needing only a draw to progress to the quarter-finals of the competition. Qualification remains very much in the balance – they...