One of the few England players who can hold his head up high after this World Cup.
He silenced the doubters (myself included) with two immense performances in midfield.
Oh and he converted a kick from 12 yards with just a goalkeeper to beat. Very unusual and very un-English behaviour. It must be the Canadian blood and the fact he plays his domestic football in Germany.
From yesterdays Press conference
[ Would Defoe have been a better selection than Walcot ? ]
'I don't think so. If I thought that I would have picked him and I have seen him 15 or 20 times this season.'
And later, Eriksson just can't help himself and, once again, shows his true colours
'The reason (for Eriksson leaving the job after the World Cup) was a newspaper coming out with lies...that is why I have sued the newspaper. It has cost me a lot of money but I am sure I will get the money back'.
Good riddance.
Golly. It is very hot today. Thankfully, the UK Government has told me the solution:
Stay out of the sun. Keep your home as cool as possible. Shutting windows during the day may help. Open them when it is cooler at night. Keep drinking fluids.
Now I would never have dreamt of thought of doing any of those things. Superb advice. May I suggest a couple of additional top tips.
Avoid alcohol. An ice-cold beer may seem very tempting but does tend to dehydrate the body. Particularly if you have 7 pints of ice-cold beer.
Avoid tea. The popular myth that 'Tea is so refreshing on a hot day' is just that - a myth. Tea contains caffeine and also tends to dehydrate the body.
Remove extraneous clothing (within reason).
If the sight of your partner stark naked (see above) gets you all hot and bothered, take a cold shower immediately. This will be far more beneficial than becoming all amorous which will only result in both parties getting even more hot and sweaty.
Did my eyes deceive me or did Jamie Carragher come on as an England substitute specifically to take a penalty in the shoot-out ?
Beckhams retirement as England captain is interesting. I suspect he will play on until he has 100 caps (currently has 94) and will then 'retire' completely from international football.
John Terry will be awarded the captaincy for two reasons. Firstly, no-one would be able to understand Steven Gerrard in press conferences. Secondly, Terry reacts in the precisely right way (openly weeping) to defeat in penalty shoot-outs.
Steve Maclaren is already tainted by association (either he agreed with Eriksson's bizarre squad selection, tactics and substitutions or he disagreed and was overruled) with this pathetic showing and the media campaign to oust him ~~will start immediately~~ has already started.
If Gerrard and Lampard's penalties were the result of hours of hard practice on the training ground, then I would hate to see their efforts without the benefit of that additional preparation.
Wayne Rooney is a excellent footballer but is an immature, young man with a volatile temperament who is not blessed with much intelligence or self restraint. It was almost inevitable that Rooney would lose his self control at some point during the tournament, particularly when carrying the hopes of the country on his shoulders and being forced to play the lone striker for two games.
Cristiano Ronaldo's intervention was also completely predictable. After all, he is playing for Portugal in the quarter finals of the World Cup. After Alex Ferguson backed Ronaldo in his row with Ruud van Nistlerooy, it will be interesting to see the consequences of this incident at MUFC.
Sshh. Please dont tell my therapist but BlogPulse matches the tone, content and links of this blog with Lauras Playground which is dedicated to 'Transsexual and Transgendered News'.
I think I need to put my favourite pink panties on and sit down with a cold drink.
You were good but not that good otherwise you wouldnt have needed extra time against Mexico and would have beaten the Germans in two hours of football.
Still, at least this will finally end to the (UK) media love-in about your fantastic football and the two best goals scored ever. You know; the one with 24 passes in the buildup and that superb, dipping volley.
Refreshing to see Gabriel Heinze attacking FIFA officials instead of lying on the turf and sobbing uncontrollably which is the proper way to face defeat in a penalty shootout.
A long day tuning SQL queries using Siebel 7.8 and Oracle 10gR2...
We used the Siebel recommended settings (TechNote 582). We used the Oracle recommended settings.
We gathered table statistics.
We gathered index statistics.
We gathered column histograms.
We dropped statistics on empty tables (Alert 1162).
We set some miscellaneous (magic) underscore parameters to encourage CBO to use the correct index.
We poured over 10053 trace files.
We used a 15 year old, deprecated, desupported optimizer technology to reduce a complex 27 table (outer) join query with a subquery to subsecond from an hourglass.
We opened an SR with Oracle Technical Support.
We opened an SR with Siebel Technical Support.
We used a stored outline.
We went home.
So farewell then, Graham Poll.
Your lifelong dream of officiating in the World Cup final is dead.
However, you only have yourself to blame. Counting the number of yellow cards awarded and to whom is a fundamental part of your job and you failed.
In August 2002, I visited Florida on holiday. In return for what seemed like 7 successive days at theme parks in sweltering weather, my family kindly allowed me a visit to the Kennedy Space Center which was a fantastic day out.
As luck would have it, a shuttle launch was actually scheduled during our stay so I planned to drive out to the highway to watch it. Unfortunately, the initial launch was postponed due to inclement weather conditions so I sporadically checked the TV and radio for the rearranged launch date and time.
One afternoon, I returned to the car and turned the radio on. I was disappointed to hear that the shuttle had just launched. However, what was infuriating was that I was only located a few miles away from KSC and missed a once in a lifetime opportunity because I was, err, shopping.
So, at the precise moment the space shuttle was blasting off into outer space, I was traipsing around Wal-Mart, for reasons that now escape me, hunting for a Phillips screwdriver, a pair of nail scissors and 4 AAA batteries.