European play-offs throw up interesting ties

The European play-offs for the World Cup threw up some interesting ties - and emphasised the importance of England qualifying top of the group rather than having to make it through the play-off system.

The ties with the teams' current FIFA rankings are:

Portugal (14) v Sweden (25)

France (21) v Ukraine (20)

Greece (15) v Romania (29)

Iceland (46) v Croatia (18)

Imagine if England had failed to win their group and had to face France to qualify! As it is Ukraine, seeded as one of the top-four ranked teams, have a tough draw facing the country one below them in the rankings.

Portugal and Sweden provide a tasty looking tie, but there will be fewer British eyes watching Greece battle with Romania or Iceland tussle with Croatia.

Portugal, France, Romania and Croatia are my picks to make it to Brazil.

I hope these are on TV, so we get a chance to watch without suffering!

The two-legged ties will be played on 15 November and 19 November.

All these officials - and they still get it wrong!

Well, good for England. They beat Ukraine and won the Group!

It wasn't entirely convincing, but not many teams are convincing all the way through a tournament. Quarter-final opponents Italy, for example, have been particularly adept over the years at sneaking through the group phase without, in some cases, even winning a game!

But England will have to get better to stand a chance of progressing in this tournament.

England have played Italy only twice before in tournament matches and, strangely enough, they have both been IN Italy. The first was in 1980 in the European Championship when they lost 1-0 in Turin. The second time was in the third and fourth place play-off match of Italia '90 when Italy won 2-1 in Bari.

Going back to the Ukraine v England match and it is astonishing that we still have to suffer from goals not being given when the ball is over the line. This time luck favoured England as John Terry's clearance was of a ball that had crossed the line. The fourth (fifth or sixth or seventh?) official was standing less than ten yards away, but failed to see the ball had crossed the line (or, at least, failed to signal it).

WHAT DO THESE OFFICIALS DO? No one at the BBC or ITV seem to know and surely they would have found out by now. And why do they patrol the goal line on the same side of the pitch as the assistant referee (linesman in old money)? Maybe the goal line official was told NOT to signal for goal line decisions (which would be madness), as that is the assistant referee's decision, but the latter's view would be obscured by the former! (At least it would have been if the assistant referee had been able to keep up with play - he was five yards short!)

In addition, this same assistant referee missed a blatant offisde in the build-up to the phantom "goal", which would have avoided all this goal line fiasco. (I note that a furious Oleg Blokhin didn't complain about that decision not being given.)

Come on, even without goal-line technology, surely the now huge number of officials can get key decisions right.

Ukraine v England not on TV

People in England will not be able to watch England on TV for the first time, when England play in Ukraine on Saturday.

There are only two ways to watch the game:
1. By paying £4.99 to watch it on the Internet.
2. By watching it at an Odeon cinema.

The game was originally bought from Kentaro – an international agency appointed by the Ukrainian Football Federation –
by Setanta, which has since collapsed.

Now, Perform – a digital sport specialist – has been appointed to stream the match online.

There is some anger among England fans, and one can only imagine it would have been much worse if the game was not a “dead rubber”, as England have already qualified for the 2010 World Cup.

Peter Silverstone, managing director of Kentaro, told BBC Sport: "You will watch as you would any other streaming on the internet, like YouTube or the BBC iPlayer - there will be a pop-up player that will show the match in a very good quality stream."

The £4.99 price is only available until Wednesday midnight. It then goes up to £9.99, and then £11.99 on Saturday.

Silverstone claimed the project is commercially viable and that it had “strategic long-term value” and wasn’t a one-off.

England fans, however, will be hoping it is.

England v Croatia

Tonight it's England v Croatia in the World Cup qualifier, and a win for England will see them qualify for South Africa 2010 with two games to spare.

Indeed, should Ukraine and Belarus draw their game earlier in the day, then England will only need a draw to qualify.

If it sounds simple, then consider that the last time England met Croatia at Wembley it was a European Championship qualifier and England only needed a draw against the Croatians who had already qualified. And we lost 3-2.

Wembley should not play host to "Mr Cock-up" this evening, thank you very much!

Of course, since that dreadful defeat, England have travelled to Croatia and beaten them 4-1 in an earlier World Cup qualifier. Advantage England.

If England do mess things up tonight, there are still two games left and a win in either would suffice to give them the group win. Those games are Ukraine away on 10th October, and Belarus at home on Wednesday 14th October.

We wouldn't want to leave it that late, would we?