England vs Egypt Open Thread

March 3rd, 2010 | by: Daryl |

England starting XI: Green, Brown, Upson, Terry, Baines, Walcott, Lampard Barry, Gerrard, Rooney, Defoe.

Presumably, they’ll line up something like this:

Green
Brown – Upson – Terry – Baines
Walcott – Lampard – Barry – Gerrard
Rooney – Defoe

Robert Green in goal, which I’m not going to complain about. My predicted “James Milner at right back” experiment is not happening. At least not from the start. Leighton Baines gets his left back audition, and I wish him good luck. A good performance here would do him all kinds of favours and also calm a few nerves about the position. Upson and Terry in central defence. Please no booing at Wembley. We don’t need that.

Midfield is as normal, with Theo Walcott getting a much needed start. Let’s hope he’s sharp tonight.

Up front Capello has gone with a Rooney-Defoe partnership, which I know the anti-Heskey crowd will be pleased with. Will be interesting to see what sort of partnership the two make.

Game is an 8pm kickoff at Wembley. It’s on ITV1 in the UK, and on Fox Soccer Plus (not Fox Soccer Channel) in the US. If you can’t watch the game on TV, then click here, but don’t tell anyone I told you about that.

No LiveBlog for this game, but please feel free to leave any match reactions in the comments.

England Football Team World Cup Blog RSS Feed

http://www.worldcupblog.org Daryl

Oh dear. Matty Upson fell over as cross came in, Mohamed Zidan controlled the ball and finished. 1-0 Egypt.
http://www.worldcupblog.org Daryl

Crouch on for Defoe and Carrick on for Lampard at half-time. Hard to get too excited about that.
http://www.worldcupblog.org Daryl

1-1! Crouch on the end of a nice passing move 10 minutes into 2nd half. Not great news for Carlton Cole’s World Cup chances. Also, SWP on for Walcott.
http://www.worldcupblog.org Daryl

2-1! SWP scores after some great work from James Milner (on for Stevie G).
Ross

3 – 1

Final score

Crouch, Wright-Phillips, Crouch
H Red

hi daryl,
good result for England but an extremely dodgy performance (1st half) in my opinion. What puzzled me was the amount of England fans I saw on SSN who thought John Terry had a good game – I thought he looked particularly uncomfortable tonight.
In seeing him getting absolutely burned in the 2nd half by Gedo(?), I imagine a lot of managers will be licking their lips.
He is now a weak link, I feel; and please don’t think I am merely jumping on the bandwagon – I am not British and have the utmost respect for him (as a player, not a human being). He looks to be lacking in pace more than ever before. England could struggle defensively in the World Cup (I know there was some statistic about clean sheets mentioned in the ITV commentary) with two “buccaneering” fullbacks and a weak link in the centre of defence.
That said, i still feel England will go on to at least the semis and will possibly win the World Cup; despite having possibly only the 5th or 6th best first-choice team in the competition, I feel they have the BEST manager and the required resolve.
H Red

ps, this is a really fantastic website, I am a huge fan
EGYPT_LOVERS

THX ENGLAND U ARE GREET TEAM ALL WORLD KNOW THAT AND WE ARE GREET TO WE LOSE BUT WE WIN THE HONOR THAT WE PLAY WITH U . AT THE END WE ARE BROTHERS THX