Ordinary Gweilo

England’s performances in Euro 2004 so far are something of a puzzle.
They played well for 90 minutes against France, but fell apart in injury time. Last night they were unconvincing against lesser opponents and yet recorded an emphatic victory.
You really couldn’t ask for a much better result than a 3-0 victory, even if Switzerland are one of the weaker teams in the competition, but the performance left a lot to be desired. Michael Owen still looks subdued, and David Beckham can surely do better than this. The whole team looked nervous, and they lost possession far more than they should have done (though clearly the heat didn’t help).
Switzerland must feel disappointed, but their biggest problem is that they simply can’t score, and they hardly threatened the England goal at all. The sending-off looked harsh to me – there was no malice, and it was nowhere near the goal, but perhaps it was just never going to be Switzerland’s day.
Clearly England will need to improve, but a draw against Croatia will be good enough and we just have to trust that they can raise their game when the need arises.
This game brought back memories of a game in the group stage of the World Cup in 1986, when England needed to beat Poland to stay in the competition. Not because of the scoreline, but because it was played in the heat of the afternoon but I was watching late in the evening (in 1986 the game was in Mexico, I was in the UK). I still remember the relief I felt went Gary Lineker scored the first goal and it seemed like everything was going to be OK (it was – England won 3-0, but lost to Argentina in the quarter-final).