England v Sweden

In the first minute of this game, Michael Owen's knee buckled under him and he had to crawl off the field. Peter Crouch came in for him, which I would think would be England's best partnership up front. They certainly looked a lot sharper once Rooney came in against Trinidad. This also does mean Crouch is England's only healthy striker.

The Swedes set the tone for the first half when Owen crawled off the field, by not pushing up and taking advantage of England being down a man for 3-4 minutes before they took Owen away for an MRI and sent in Crouch. The Swedes didn't really show up to play until the opening of the second half. The second round can't come fast enough if this is how teams are going to close out the group stage, figuring they're 75% sure where they'll end up so why bother. At least the rest of the groups have a meaningful game left, although Ukraine v Tunisia could be two teams hitting the snooze button until the cab comes to pick up Tunisia to take them to the airport.

On the plus side, England's first goal was pretty cool. Joe Cole takes a really long shot, from way out, that looks like it's going into row ZZ, and like an optical illusion or something it drops enough to go under the bar. Isaksson got a hand on it when he realized it was coming down but not enough to tip it over the bar. It was just a perfect shot, unless you're Brazilian in which case it was a lucky fluke (like Ronaldinho's winner against England in 2002 that they didn't stop whining about for at least two years).

In the second half, the Swedes came to play, and came out on a tear to start the second half. On a Swedish free kick, Marcus Allback shook off Beckham coming across the 6 yard box and flicked a header to the far post where it glanced off the top of Ashley Cole and into the roof of the net. On the replay you can see Beckham lazily fall behind Allback and hurriedly wipe incriminating traces of lasagna from his mouth when Allback scores. That was the 2000th goal scored in the World Cup. The same play nearly scored on a free kick from the other side three minutes later, but Robinson slapped this one over the bar. Olof Mellberg put a shot off the crossbar on another set piece two minutes later, and England just looked terrible and disorganized on all these free kicks and corners. That really can't bode well. At some point during this frenzy of corner kicks England took off Ali G and put in Sol Campbell, I don't know if that made any difference, and everybody went back to sleep for a half hour.

England pulled ahead in the 85th minute when Sweden really broke down, giving Joe Cole way too much time to set up a cross and leaving Steven Gerrard unattended on the back post for the open header. Henrik Larsson tied it back up in the 90th minute on a header from a throw-in to preserve Sweden's 38 year unbeaten streak against England, but I don't know that anybody really wanted to win this game. Fortunately for Sweden, they got the draw and Trinidad blew it against Paraguay to give them some insurance, but god, I wish there was a bye for group winners or free coffee and hookers or something to wake these guys up for the last game.

Sweden 2-2 England
'34 J. Cole
'50 Allback
'85 Gerrard
'90 Larsson

Paraguay 2-0 Trinidad & Tobago
'25 Sancho (o.g.)
'86 Cuevas

(Of the three goals scored by Paraguay and Trinidad players in this tournament, two were on their own #&@$'ing nets.)

England will now avoid Germany until the final, sparing us the horrible taste shown by English fans, who apparently have no associations for Germany other than a war they didn't live through (some of them did, obviously, but I'm referring to David Beckham hiring WWII fighters to fly over his World Cup party and all the idiots taking inflatable spitfires to Germany, where doing something like that is considered glorifying the deaths of millions in the war and the holocaust). I have an uncle who fought in the pacific, and knew many guys in the navy who were insanely racist towards asians all their lives because of serving in that war, but I'd be ashamed to tell him I was going to Japan for a World Cup carrying an inflatable Enola Gay. I don't know why this is annoying me so much, but it's probably because both the US and Britain are in the middle of a war and dealing with the aftermath of terrorism, so "My grandparents were good at killing yours!" seems like a really dumb thing to say at a fucking game. Maybe England's next game can be moved to Dresden if they really want to rub it in. I'm sure I do the same thing, but I'm using the Ian Wright exception and claiming it's not hypocrisy when I do it.

England plays Ecuador on Sunday, and the winner plays the winner of Portugal vs Holland. Sweden plays Germany on Saturday, with the winner playing the winner of Argentina vs Mexico, although I have a fair fucking clue who that's going to be.