Still a few minutes to go. Croatia 1-4 England. Surely Capello will be awarded the Freedom of Croydon after this, and Walcott will get a CBeeBie and become the Straight-A ambassador to Salford, no?
When you need to “bounce back”, this is how you should do it. Writing as an armchair West Ham fan*, I feel compelled to congratulate Arsenal on their fantastic performance last night. Awesome, scintillating football! Not only has no team from England so dominated AC Milan on their own ground, but I don’t ever recall seeing anyone else do so either.
Given Arsenal’s recent travails and signs of apparent psychological frailty under pressure (epitomized by the sight of an emotional William Gallas collapsed on the turf at the end of the Birmingham game), I’m sure more than a few Arsenal fans went into last night’s match fearing the worst. What they got was quite simply an awesome display of football played at the highest level. The individual skill, strength, determination, fitness, and superb positioning of the Arsenal players, particularly in midfield, quite honestly made AC Milan look like a team of schoolboys for long periods during the game. How often has it been possible to say that about Milan? They were fire-fighting for much of the match and seemed to be in a state of bewilderment in the face of Arsenal’s power-play. Towards the end of the second half they appeared to have been rendered ineffectual as a unit.
Adebayor and Diaby seemed to be able to go past their opponents at will, Hleb and Fabregas appeared to have super-glue on the end of their boots and they unerringly collected passes and spun away from danger like matadors with black belts in Aikdo, Senderos was Adams-esque in defence, haranguing his colleagues, putting in vital tackle after tackle. I seriously doubt that the crowd at the San Siro has ever seen its team go for such long periods without the ball.
Fantastic stuff. Thanks to all at AFC for an exciting 90 minutes (if only the England team could play football like this). Here’s to an Arsenal-Barcelona final!
(*I haven’t been to Upton Park since 1979 and last went to a match in which West Ham played in 1996)
If you think the earth’s atmosphere is in a bad way, you should try playing for the Manchester United first team at Old Trafford. Seriously, how long will it be before football’s corporate suits introduce ‘canned’ cheering during games? I’m not being facetious, I really think they’re going to do something like this.