England 1, France 2

[anotherusedpage]

Well, that was thoroughly sickening.
Fucking fantastic first half. I mean, not perfect, but... not the kind of scrappy shite we've occasionally seen from them either. And a decent goal - at first I thought it was Mikey on the end of David's cross, which made me squee, but Lampard'll do for scoring goals. And when Scholes' shot went over, you could lip read him yelling 'one day, one day!' at the crowd. Although when he tacked Pires, my automatic reaction was to side with Pires.
And then in the second half, when Eriksson subbed off Mikey and Rooney, I immediately thought uh-oh, shades of Brazil in the World cup. And then when they were only keeping one up by having every player back, I thought uh-oh even harder.
And then that free kick went in... I said to the guy sitting next to me 'if you'd asked me at the beginning of the match I'd've been happy with one all, just as long as they don't get a second...' and before I'd got to the end of the sentence, there was David James sprawled out accross the floor, and.... gyargh. I just can't imagine what it must feel like to not being able to save the penalty which you gave away yourself. Poor fucker.
I can't quite manage to work out the maths of how hard getting any futher is going to be now.
And now I've got to get back to revision.

Comments

[dyddgu.livejournal.com]

*not-really-understanding-but-sympathies, at least you're in the tournament ;-)*

As far as Jen2 was saying in the pub, you have to win the next two matches... I have no idea what the other clubs need to do. Lose I guess, but I wouldn't know...
Ain't no more help than that, sorry...

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

I think we could even pull it off with a win and a draw, as long as France win all their matches.
And thanks for caring, or at least pretending to.

[uberwald.livejournal.com]

I'm consoling myself with the thought that given how both Switzerland and Croatia played this afternoon, we're still well in control of qualifying.

Why did he sub Mikey and Piglet??? Why?????? I'm even big enough to conced that Mikey should have gone off before Piglet cos he was playing like a little demon but both of them? *kicks Sven*

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

I've never seen why everyone's raved about Rooney before, all the games I've actually seen him playing he was uninspiring, and I seem to have missed all the ones where he was actually as fiery and good as he was today. But he IS bloody good on his feet, I was well impressed.
I didn't think that taking Mikey off was necessarily a bad thing, Darius can be a real play-maker sometimes, and Mikey's not exactly great on the stamina front. But Heskey for Rooney made no sense at all. I wasn't sure about Scholes for Hargreaves either. He must've felt pretty secure, and wanted to take off all the hot-tempered stubbon-as-fuck buggers before someone conceeded a penalty. Shame he couldn't have done the same for the goalie really... although that's being unfair, James was rock-solid until the last five mins or so.
And they did play well. In some senses it was the best I've seen them play in a while. It was especially encouraging how strong the defence was for most of the game even without Rio, Southgate, Woodgate or Terry. And... well, if you'd've asked me my predictions yesterday, I'd've said 'we're fucked'. It's just that to play so well and to go ahead and to be in control for so long just to fuck it up at the last minute is just... argh.
Anyway. On the OTHER other plus side, I now have a random Figo and Beckham angst bunny jumping up and down in my head saying write me write me, but I can't until I've done these exams.

[uberwald.livejournal.com]

yeah, the thing to cling to is that we held France for over 90mins and right up until Zidane got the free kick they were starting to run out of ideas for breaking us down...that gives me a lot of hope.

Gotta hold my hands up and say King played very well, despite the not-being-Carra-ness. Stevie's probably beating himself up about the back pass but he shouldn't, he was rock solid overall. Michael didn't have his best game but I think he was heavily marked..

Oh well. Just have to beat them in the final instead, eh?

[anotherusedpage.livejournal.com]

Yup. That'll do me.
I do want to watch them play again. It doesn't happen nearly often enough, and made for very pretty football.

[fu-manchu12.livejournal.com]

It was fairly frustrating. To concede two goals in the space of seconds, just when victory seemed within our grasp. Oh well. We can still qualify, though. All is not lost.