I was going to post another Vince Stanzione video today but I totally forgot about the World Cup draw in Cape Town yesterday and it’s a great draw for England…..is our luck finally turning?
I think that Capello will prepare us right and I think that we will have a good tournament at the least. We should top our group against Slovenia, USA and Algeria. Some people will say that these are not easy teams and they are right but there are no easy teams in the finals.
But if you want to win a World Cup then you have to come through against these sides. Alan Shearer got it spot on during the BBC commentary when he said that if we fear the likes of USA then there has to be something wrong somewhere.
It always makes me laugh when I hear footballers and managers say that it doesn’t matter who we get because you have to beat the best teams sooner or later anyway…….partly true but mainly incorrect. You would rather have an easy route to winning a World Cup than a hard one.
If you are playing world class sides after world class sides from the 2nd round onwards then the chances are that you are not going to make it through those series of games. Imagine a sequence where you had to play Portugal, France, Argentina and Brazil from the last 16 to the final in order to win it.
How many countries in the world would come through that series of games. But if you only have to beat 1 or 2 of them because you had an easier fixture or two along the way then your chances of winning the competition are far greater…..want proof……Germany in 2002. They did not play ANYBODY who was capable of winning the tournament until Brazil in the final and you can simply google the 2002 World Cup to see what I mean.
Same tournament and England had played both Argentina and Brazil by the time it had got to the last eight. So you need some luck with the draw and which teams you have to face and this is the same with any cup competition. One only has to look at how the 2008 FA Cup turned out with Portsmouth, Barnsley, West Brom and Cardiff reaching the semis.
If Cardiff had to face Aston Villa, Blackburn, Liverpool, Arsenal and then Spurs to reach the final then what would have been their chances? It is true that you have to beat a top side at some stage but you don’t want to have to beat them at every step of the way and the less serious hurdles you have to overcome then the better your chances……simple.
I am getting World Cup fever already, don’t know how I am going to get any work done next summer 
Carl “The Dean” Sampson at poker loco
