The Future

As a follow-on from my previous football-related post, during which I promised to espouse on the ways that the England footy team can recover from its current pit of despair, another significant event in the England calendar occurred today as the first half of the mountain that needs to be climbed has been identified.  This afternoon’s draw for the qualifying campaign for World Cup 2010 has thrown us, once more, together with scourge of Euro qualifiers, Croatia.  The other teams

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Tags: 2010, Andorra, Belarus, Croatia, England, FA, Kazakhstan, Steve-McLaren, Ukraine, World-Cup

Remember When England Could Win Matches?

When Mladen Petric fired home Croatia’s winner and broke the hearts of every England fan on Wednesday night, I was reminded of an old sketch from the Mary Whitehouse Experience… [adopting a John Motson-style voice] “D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R-F-O-R-E-N-G-L-A-N-D…. and that could spell disaster for England!”. On a global scale, when watching news footage from cyclone-hit Bangladesh or the unfolding political tensions in Pakistan or the quashing of freedom in Burma, it’s easy to argue about the fact that this was, after all, only a football match.

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Tags: Brian Barwick, Croatia, England, Euro2008, FA, Football, International, Kevin Keegan, Qualification, Steve-McLaren, Sven Goran Eriksson, WAGs

Another View

The recent England football internationals gave me another excuse, as if one were needed, to head down to the local pub for an afternoon of beer and shouting at the television.� There was a noticable lack of interest in the match against Israel as proved by the usual masses of fans, draped in St George’s Crosses and replica kits, being largely absent (”part-time supporters”, what would you do with ‘em, eh?).� Despite that, the on pitch performance was pretty good.� Steve McLaren

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Tags: David-Beckham, England, Euro2008, Football, Israel, qualifier, Sarah-Jane, Sarah-Jane-Adventures, Sport, Wayne-Rooney

Broad Shoulders

Way back in the dark ages, over two years ago if you’re counting, the very first post on Fazzinchi.co.uk was not about Doctor Who, sci-fi, or the latest American import show. It was, in fact, about cricket. My sports-related blogging has been somewhat lacking of late but what better time to resurrect the past-time? The big sporting question of the weekend is choosing what to watch at 5pm on Saturday afternoon. On ITV, the English rugby team are begining the defence of their

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Tags: BBC1, England, Euro-2008, Football, India, Israel, ITV, Rugby-World-Cup, SkySports, Sport, USA

Old Trafford In The Sun

It’s been a while since I blogged about the cricket, or in fact, any sport at all.� However, the weather is getting positively summery and the football is over, so there’s nothing better than to sit back and while away the hours with a bit of test match cricket.� Unfortunately, the quality on offer leaves something to be desired as the West Indian tourists have arrived in Blighty with one of the poorest looking outfits I can recall.� Brian Lara’s controversial decision to quit the international

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Tags: Chanderpaul, England, Gayle, Harmison, Lara, Panesar, Plunkett, Sidebottom, SkySports, Sport, Strauss, West-Indies

What’s Going On?

It’s a been a while since a cricket post has turned up here at Fazzinchi.com but in acknowledgement that something a bit special (but only a bit!) happened this morning here’s another one.� England have beaten Australia by 92 runs, it’s not quite on the scale of the successes of the summer before last but a win is a win.� Of course, as the always entertaining Bumble is happy to tell us on SkySports, “You’ve won one game. Well done. Now move along”.� The perspective that we

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Tags: Australia, Cricket, Ed-Joyce, England, Freddie-Flintoff, Mal-Loye, SkySports, Sport