Day -580 WorldCup2018
Watching England play at Wembley these days is very, very boring. They beat Scotland 3-0 today and, admittedly, they didn't have to put in much more energy than when they played Malta in October. But they could have been playing in Malta for how quiet the 90,000 strong crowd was. True, the fans didn't have much to get enthused about. Better than my opening sentence: England really are quite boring to watch these days.
Malta kept up the perfect 100% loss/no goals scored record against Slovenia. There were a couple of moments when they came close to going ahead but whether it was bad luck or lack of confidence it was not to be. One of the very good chances fell to Luke Gambin, Malta's English-based, Maltese-grandfather-having speedy winger. That it fell to him is not quite right. A beautiful hit cross came to him at speed right in front of the Slovenian goal. It was one of those medium height crosses where as a fan you wonder, as quickly as the player has to make a decision, is he going to go for the diving header or will he stick a flying leg out? He did neither and the ball hit him as he sort of tumbled through the air and rebounded harmlessly wide. Was that one chance that came to nothing really worth that amount of time spent describing it? When you are a supporter of Malta, yes. A goal scoring opportunity, especially recently, is gold. Almost as good as scoring.
The biggest surprise of the day was Northern Ireland's 4-0 win against Azerbaijan. Northern Ireland don't thrash anybody, not even Malta. And Azerbaijan seemed to have become a team that don't lose like that to anybody. They hadn't even conceded a goal in their first three matches. Before this match was played I had it down as a brave draw by the Irish against the vastly improved Azeri's. And those were going to be the words of the Northern Irish press. Now they are happily writing about another fantastic win. What a wonderful two years it's been for them. I wouldn't bet on them beating Germany to first place in the group, but the race for second place with the Czech Republic, or Azerbaijan, will be fun.
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