It's A Knockout

Now we're into the knockout rounds, and next up it's the Germans. Despite a relatively unconvincing start (rather like England) they're not to be underestimated. England have never beaten a top-level team in the knockout rounds of a World Cup away from Wembley, and not at all since 1966. However nor have Germany since 1990 unless it went to penalties.

An inexperienced German team (of whom 11 players are eligible to play for other countries) against an experienced English team. It's an intriguing contest, hopefully we can emulate the score in the picture above.

As expected some of the tabloid newspapers have put their less than dignified hats on, although the German equivalents are hardly innocent in this area either. Me? I love Germany, I worked and lived there for a number of years; it's one of my favourite of all European countries. And they're not as sensitive to this 'don't mention the war stuff' as we might imagine, though I find the '10 German Bombers' chant to be more than a little tedious.

Germany have always been a country that has beaten us fair and square, so it is only on a football level that I would love England to win. Argentina are likely to be our next opponents should we go through, now that's a different matter...