If you were to summarise England’s World Cup, you couldn’t do better than this:

1) Half-Time Report – England Have Arrived

2) England – You’re Going Home

The final group game against Sweden (that ended in a shambolic 2-2 draw) was England’s whole World Cup experience in a microcosm. Beckham marginalised on the right, Cole and Gerrard impressing, The defence solid but inexplicably prone to collapse, the horrible substitutions…

and Lampard.

Those two links were written at a time difference of 45 minutes – the first at half-time of the England-Sweden match, and the second after the match had ended. If you want to know what England really did…read those two posts.

Oh, and according to the latest FIFA Rankings (July 2006), England ranks no. 5 in the world. The top 10 are:

1. Brazil

2. Italy

3. Argentina

4. France

5. England

6. Netherlands

7. Spain

8. Portugal

9. Germany

10. Czech Republic

In a 90-minutes game England would be odds-on favourites to lose to all these teams, with the exception of Portugal and possibly the Czechs.