Vandenburg wrote:

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Great draw for England,

I think psychology at this stage is important. A bit like tennis actually. Even if Cilic is playing better tennis than Nadal or Federer, Murray would still rather play Cilic in the final, just as psychologically, it is a smaller name.

Yes, england are on route to play teams that top their group like Columbia and Sweden, but I would much rather face them, then traditional big names like Brazil, Portugal and France et al.

Well done Southgate.

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 Interesting you should allude to that - A colleague of mine was talking about the last World Cup when Germany thrashed Brazil 7 - 1 in the knockout stages. Said Germany just played the team and not their reputation and Brazil played like they were in shock.

And I bet Jeremy is better at taking penalties, if Ospina had attacked that in the way Pickford did with a stronger wrist he would have made a second great penalty save. Columbia were a more than decent side when they let themselves play football, Falcso thankfully a shadow of the player Monoco signed but Yerry Mina is a beast.

Where were we defensively on the Colombian goal, the only time in the match we lost concentration. In that respect Pickford was absolutely outstanding, distribution from the back second to none and what a save in the run up to the goal, to turn that round, a snapshot from 35 yards heading in the top corner to his weaker side, amazing!

With Villa in financial meltdown it was great to reflect on better times for Villa, Southgate strutting the sideline in the way he used to marshall the Villa defence, cashley Young maurading downn left, Kyle Walker (looking a little wobbly at centre back but most of all I throughly enjoyed the mighty performance of ex villan Carlos Sanchez, he dysplayed perfectly the skill set drummed unto him by Paul Lambert in B6, a great Scottish contribution to English sporting success.

Coup Droit wrote:

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JonH wrote:

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For what it is worth Eric dier is son of ex Wimbledon tennis player jeremy dier

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 That's interesting.

Would rather that football players' kids became tennis players but the other way round has to happen too.

By the way, as this was my year of gloom, I went for England going out in the group stages in the poll so I am wrong - and happily so 

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 Well no one voted for anything beyond the quarters, so I hope we are all proved wrong!!