Despite years of disappointment and frustration, hopes were once again high for England this world cup. England looked good in the qualifying campaign, resulting in the 4 year cycle of blind hope and media hype. But then reality came crashing back down.

The first 14 or 15 games of the 2010 tournament were absolutely appalling. Boring, negative 0-0 or 1-0 games with only Germany breaking the mould with a confident 4-0 victory. By the time England had disappointed us with a dour 1-1 draw against the USA the world cup was fast becoming a huge let down. It got even worse. The 0-0 draw with Algeria was perhaps the worst performance I have ever seen by an England team. People were getting angry, and with good reason.

Thankfully since then England have qualified for the second round after a much improved performance in their last group game against Slovenia. The tournament as a whole has also come to life and we have seen some highly entertaining games such as Portugal’s 7-0 victory over North Korea, Argentina’s 4-1 win against South Korea and the best of them all last night; a complete stonker which saw reigning champions Italy dumped out at the group stage after a 3-2 defeat to Slovakia.

Hopefully we can look forward to more of these rip roaring duels and the dour, low scoring games of the first round can be forgotten. For what it’s worth I think England will be edged out by Germany in the second round. Ze Germans will then go out to Argentina in the quarter finals. They have looked very good under Maradonna and Lionel Messi has been living up to his hype, so far. He has had more shots on target than any other player (20). But somehow he still hasn’t scored.

I have £20 on Spain and happen to be over there on the night of the final. So they will probably bottle it.