The 3 Lions get their second game of the tournament underway tonight as they take on Ghana at the Boston Stadium. Hopes will be high as England look to guarantee progression to the round of 32 with a win. After the 4-2 victory over Croatia it is very unlikely that Tommy Tickles will not change his starting line-up, unless of course the injury concern for Declan Rice is serious enough for him to. I would guess that Rice will be starting despite all the talk about him playing with a hamstring injury during the back end of Arsenal's championship winning season, whether or not he sees out the full 90 minutes is another question, hopefully though, if he is withdrawn at some point in the game, England will be already cruising to victory. I know that people say that there are no easy games in football, and of course teams like Cape Verde have already proven this after their two draws with Spain and Uruguay, but I do feel however that Ghana pose much less of a threat. The truth is if we play anywhere near as well as we did against Croatia in the second half of last week's game, the Ghanian's won't be able to live with us. By tomorrow morning we should be sitting atop Group L and looking forward to playing a 3rd place finisher from one of the other groups. When the draw was originally made and everyone was looking for scenarios of who plays who in the next round, the most likely reward for England topping the group was a round of 32 match against Senegal, this however may not know be the case as Senegal, despite playing quite well have somehow managed not to pick up a single point yet. After losing to both France and then narrowly being defeated by a Haaland inspired Norway 3-2, of course Senegal could still get through but they would now have to beat Iraq in their last game by a couple of goals to nil to stand any realistic chance of making the round of 32.
England's success not only tonight but hopefully throughout the tournament relies heavily on the goalscoring form of Harry Kane, the England skipper and talisman has already opened his account with a couple of strikes and a couple more tonight against the Black stars will still see him in contention for the golden boot, but there is some stiff opposition. The big names that everyone has tipped to score goals are scoring goals, Haaland now has 4, M'bappe also has 4 and that little magician Messi, who turns 39 on Thursday has 5 after only 2 games. I reckon the winner of this golden boot is going to finish on 8 or 9 goals come the end of the tournament, and if Argentina and France get to the final it could be as high as 11 or 12.
To be honest I'm pretty glad that we are nearly at the end of the group stages, the amount of games has been ridiculous, but after the early hours of tomorrow morning it all changes and because all four teams in every group has to play their final game at he same time. This of course is because way back in 1982, West Germany beat Austria 1-0 to make sure that both teams qualified, the other game in the group finished Algeria 3 Chile 2 and despite Algeria beating Germany 1-0 in the first game, the two German speaking sides knew as long as none of them lost by 3 goals they would both go through, no matter what Algeria and Chile did when they played a day later. The good thing is this means that the 3rd group games will be over by the weekend and the real tournament begins when we get through to the knockout stages at last.
Hopefully a few of the big boys would have slipped up along the way, and when I say some teams I mean Portugal and Belgium, nothing would give me greater pleasure than seeing Bob Martins and Cristiano Ronaldo crying and getting on the plane early. Unfortunately I can't see this happening as no matter how poor Ronaldo may be, surely even he can't stink the place out against Uzbekistan can he? It would be hilarious if he did though.
We have already lost a couple of teams already, including most peoples favourites for Group D, Turkey. Their 2 defeats to both USA and Paraguay has meant that they are already out even before they kick a ball in their last game. The Turks have played pretty well and created plenty of chances, however their inability to put the ball int the back of the net has been their downfall and as we have seen up until now you need to score goals if you are going to go deep into this World Cup.
Lets hope tonight's game against Ghana gives us that and lets hope Harry Kane and the boys get the job done.
Up the 3 Lions!!
