England’s World Cup draw is not as bad as it could have been so I’m going to be positive and say we will qualify for the knock-out stage.
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Getting Italy, Uruguay and Costa Rica wasn’t the greatest draw for us and some people are already calling it the group of death.
But it’s not the hardest either in my opinion – more middle of the road.
To be honest I don’t think it would have made much difference whichever teams we had drawn.
At the end of the day if all of the England players are on form and they play well they have a chance of beating most sides.
If we don’t play well we are liable to get beaten by a lot of teams in world football – it’s as simple as that.
We have avoided the two biggest favourites; in Brazil and Argentina if you like.
But, of course, two-time winners Uruguay are no mugs especially if Luis Suarez continues to show the Premier League form he’s in at the moment.
He is certainly a player we are going to have to pay a bit of special attention to I would say.
His current form with Liverpool is exceptional. No wonder he was full of smiles after scoring four goals a few days ago against Norwich.
Maybe Suarez won’t be as potent for his country because the players around him in the Uruguay team are not as good as they are at Liverpool.
Also, Uruguay didn’t exactly take their qualifying group by storm – they only got to the finals by beating Jordan via the play-offs.
Italy is always a tough fixture because we have a history with them and it’s not a particularly great one.
They are four times winners of the World Cup and knocked us out, on penalties of course, in the quarter-finals of Euro 2012.
They might even believe they have an easy group, although I’m quite sure they didn’t want to meet us.
We could also have come up against a much harder North American team than Costa Rica.
Bryan Oviedo, who scored Everton’s winner at Manchester United in midweek, plays for them but I would struggle to name any of his compatriots to be honest.
And if we get through we will be paired against either Colombia, Greece, Ivory Coast or Japan which is fairly decent I would say.
There are some other tasty groups around with Germany drawn to play Cristiano Ronaldo’s Portugal and the USA, who are managed by their 1990 World Cup winner and former coach Jürgen Klinsmann.
Holders Spain also have a difficult group in that they meet Chile, who recently beat England at Wembley, and Holland in a repeat of the 2010 final.
I recall Holland tried to kick the daylights out of the Spanish leaving English referee Howard Webb caught up in a nightmare scenario.
Webb cautioned something like 12 players and eventually dismissed Dutchman John Heitinga for a second yellow card in extra time.
It was horrible seeing Holland play that way so it’s going to be a very interesting rematch.
Hosts Brazil can feel quite pleased, too, with their line-up against Croatia, Mexico and Cameroon.
But Lionel Messi’s Argentina might as well be given a bye into the last 16 after their draw.
Pairing them with Bosnia-Hercegovina, Iran and Nigeria is a gimme surely?
It’s quite interesting to see France have a relatively comfortable draw alongside Switzerland, Ecuador and Honduras.
They managed to squeeze their way through the play-offs and all of a sudden the rules are changed regarding where to place the European teams in the draw. Magnificent!
If Michel Platini, head of UEFA, could have personally hand-picked a group for France it probably would have been this one.
It’s also interesting to see that Brazil and Spain could face each other early in the knock-out stages.
Now some people are already saying that it would help our cause if one of the fancied teams went out early.
But it’s no good looking too far ahead; when it comes down to England-one step at a time please.
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This photograph was provided by Goalden Goals.
