Embarrassment

Let's face it from the first game we were never in this tournament. Flattered by beating a nation of two million in the last group game, we were made to look what we are, a collection of individuals by the Germans.

The simple fact is that we don't have enough English players playing Premier League football at a high enough standard. When Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea, Man Utd and Man City fill their starting line ups with foreign players (funded by the TV money), then where are the future English internationals going to play football at the highest standard? Now you can argue that if they're good enough then they will break through but that simply means that when one or two do, you end up with players (Rooney, Gerrard & Lampard) who have no competition for their places. Others like Theo Walcott don't play regularly enough which just adds pressure when they do play and some of the "top" players actually aren't.

This has two impacts firstly the good ones get too complacent and secondly their replacements (if they get injured) play for West Ham, Aston Villa and the the like and that drop in class shows.

The future, I fear, is bleak. Our "golden generation" is getting old, many will not play in another World Cup and the players coming up from the Under 21's don't look of the same class (and who do they play for both now and in the future?).

As worrying is, if you read the BBC gossip column, all the talk is of Premier League teams buying more foreign players. Less and less English players will be playing Premier League football at any standard if this carries on.

The first solution is that we introduce "caps" on foreign players, but firstly "money talks" and secondly european/international law probably forbids it. Secondly we need to improve our coaching acadamies, but they too are now filling up with foreign youngsters, and the success that Arsenal had with Fabregas, will only encourage that approach. So there needs to be some intervention there too, but "money" and" European law" probably also apply?

Still we did get further than both the winners and runners up of the 2006 competition!

Festival

I've just been looking through the full Glastonbury line up for the week end after next.

One of the wonders of the festival in particular is the acts performing "down the bill" who you had no idea were performing (either at Glastonbury, or for one or two, at all!)

This year, among the hundreds of bands there, the following should be appearing :-

• Jackson Browne
  
• Lightning Seeds
  
• The Pet Shop Boys
  
• The National
  
• Nouvelle Vague
  
• Toots & the Maytals
  
• Mumford & Sons
  
• Ash
  
• Gang of Four
  
• Hypnotic Brass Ensemble
  
• Nick Lowe
  
• Al Stewart
  
• Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel
  

I wonder how many of those the BBC will manage to show at least one song live?

The Sound of the crowd

For those of you who follow this blog and don't know, each blog title is also a song title. Clever huh?

Most of the time I have the subject of the blog first and then fit the song to it. Occasionally though a song title jumps into my head and the blog then writes itself. This is one of the latter type.

Every World Cup game this tournament will sound like a swarm of angry bees are loose near to the effects microphone. The reason for this is a trumpet like instrument, widely available in South Africa called the "vuvuzela". This has led to wide scale debate on whether this is adding to the experience or ruining it. Most comment seems to be against the noise they make. Indeed Bill Turnbull on BBC Breakfast this morning even had a conversation with the sound engineer as to whether the feed from the stadium could have the crowd noise "turned down"? Simple answer – no it can't!

There has been talk of having them banned, but the SA economy is likely to be c$2m better off through sales so that's fairly unlikely. If someone throws one at a player then that could change, but let's hope that doesn't happen.

I actually quite like them; after all during the first England game I didn't hear the entirely inappropriate "Great Escape" at all!

Back home

So we put the wall chart up at work this week, the excellent Baddiel & Skinner podcast has examined the squad (main question – "Will Peter Crouch suffer more from playing at altitude as he will be higher up than the rest of the squad or as he plays at a slightly higher altitude than the rest of the squad all the time, will he be less affected by it?") and shops from "99p stores" to Waitrose have a special section of merchandise!

The BBC & ITV cannot have a gap between programmes without having a trail for it and programmes "remembering previous ones" have been commissioned. Last night Radio 5 live had "the 1986 squad" looking over the current squad and reminiscing about their tournament.

Most offices have drawn their sweepstake and twitter is full of posts along the lines of "I got Algeria in the sweepstake so that's me stuffed"

As we have no official song for this tournament, lots of quite dreadful remakes or new songs are about to be unleashed on an unsuspecting public.

And the boy who was the shock inclusion in the last squad is the shock exclusion as a young man for this one.

Ladies & gentlemen the 2010 Wold Cup is a week away...enjoy.