(pens 3-4)

Champions [sic] League [sic] Final, Allianz Arena, Munich, 19/5/12.

So a piss-poor team (who finished only 6^th in their national championship) from a piss-poor league (whose top two were horsed in the knock-out stages of the Europa League [sic]) have become “Champions of Europe.”

If ever football at the top level showed itself as an emperor with no clothes this farrago did. Chelsea made very little effort to win this match. Had they done so they might have been worthy winners of the game, but what few attacking sorties they did make revealed them as capable of troubling the Munich defence if not of breaching it. But they had one attempt on target all game – and the keeper didn’t save it.

So it went to the travesty of penalties.

Frank Lampard at the end said, “We worked hard for this. We deserved it.”

No you didn’t deserve it, Frank. You finished second in your league last year. You shouldn’t have been in the competition at all.

And plenty people work hard and receive no reward for it.

Still Roberto De Matteo has worked wonders in the short time he’s been interim manager. If he gets the job full time though the problems with an ageing team and over-powerful players will remain. And they’ll all be a year older.

Free State Stadium, Maungang/Bloemfontein, 27/6/10

Well, this humiliation was coming.

Here, after dismal performances against the USA, Algeria and (despite some whistling in the dark) Slovenia, a bunch of over-blown, over-paid, cosseted individuals who perhaps believe their own hype too much but played as if they’d never seen each other before were roundly horsed by an opposition who worked together as a team and actually looked as if they knew what they were doing.

Yes, the ball was over the line from Frank Lampard’s shot but it wasn’t a goal. It wasn’t a goal because the ref didn’t give it. End of debate.

And forget about goal line technology. It’s not needed. For big games like this the fifth ref – as introduced in the Europa League this season – would surely have spotted this one.

Back to the game.

There was a telling stat which unrolled a few minutes before Germany scored.

Shots: Germany 4 England 0.

Yet England had had the greater share of possession. They simply couldn’t do anything with it.

At half time I was thinking that Argentina would probably take both of them. Germany’s confidence will have an almighty boost now, though. A 4-1 win does that to you. And we’ll see how Argentina fare against Mexico tonight.

As far as England is concerned, was it a case of good players not living up to their potential?

Maybe it’s really that they’re not actually very good, that in their club sides they are surrounded by people of other nationalities who make them look better than they are.

Anyway, I can relax and enjoy the competition now. No more references to 1966 to spoil it.