Nah. Even if he doesn't play, Rino's the last guy I'd ship out. He's important in the dressing room as a motivator if nothing else.

GERRADD !!
Í hope he doesn't go to Inter..

This is the first time ever I'm supporting England.

OMG Green!!!

I think he would've scored a hattrick not 5 goals - 2 of them were more or less principal saves. but still, he's nowhere near what he is for Barca/in La Liga. like I'd suspected, he's no better than any other "great player" that I've seen before.
EDIT: and perhaps Higuain is not as good as his form and performances for Real suggest. looked painfully average today.

HOWLER BY GREEN!! 1-1! (poor guy, I feel for him )

Lucky to be 1-1 but I could care less how we get em. A goal is a goal. USA!

damn u Green

With apologies to Kurt and the other England supporters, it seems that England is keeping up with a current tradition of goalkeeping howlers.

That said, England looked stronger in general terms. But hey...like Dracoris said, a goal's a goal and Green is...now added to the list.

Why'd Milner get pulled?

After watching the Uruguay-whoever they played highlights yesterday, I have to say that was a hell of a save by Muslera. And a clean sheet to boot.


It's embarrassing, really, and not good PR for Team Blatter.

I'd heard two weeks ago on ESPN Radio that ticket sales were extremely slow. South Africa isn't the best location for a sporting event of this magnitude, unfortunately.

There was an article somewhere today (? Gazzetta perhaps, I don't remember which language it was in) stating that the ticket prices were too high for a lot of Africans go actually go to games (not just folks in South Africa, also folks in other parts of the continent).

And I fail to be surprised. Sounds all too predictable.

Wow, Onyewu has been absolutely pathetic so far. 70% of England's opportunities came from his screwed offside trap positioning.

It was pretty questionable to call him up in the first place, considering he spent all of this past season on the shelf.

i think its great that they are having it in Africa to show that rasism doesn't matter but of course people in Africa can't buy tickets because people took and stole from them.
To be honest it's not the Africans fault, England dumps their junk in Africa for less money..
how many times did USA go to war, (well mostly Asia) but Somalia to..
sad actually

Spare us an off-topic political rant, please. Thanks.

I will, thank u for pointing that out.

FT. 1-1

Can't wait for Kurt!

Well, I generally consider him the guy who's probably the best active coach in football but gosh. Capello picked a really bad time to screw up the lineups. Green was a mistake, ditto King. I dunno why he pulled Milner but that could not have helped matters.

I don't think the US played all that well. But neither did England really - and for them there's a lot more in terms of reputation to lose.

Woohooo!!!

Can you imagine the British press in the morning?

Ahhh, heaven.....

Pleased overall if Im honest.

Performance wise were the best team in the competition so far. My mate in the pub got it about tight - only England can beat England and it rung true today.

Howard had a great game, easily could have been 4/5.

Green made one mistake, but rightfuy most of it will fall on Fabio, embarassing from the don tonight.

Somewhere, Andy Gray's probably having an aneurysm right now.

I was watching in Maltese commentary, but I can imagine how he creamed himself over Gerrard during the entire first half, and I can't wait to hear his reaction on Youtube after Green's butter finger incident

Credit to the US they were great in the first half, but by the second half they ran out of steam and really started to let England play and were giving Rooney a lot more space. I thought England's goal came from the US defenders being totally focused on Rooney and letting that gaping hole to appear in the middle which gerrard exploited.

I thought Onyewu was decent, he made a couple of mistakes, but really stepped up in the end to kill some plays that could have been very dangerous

What were you smoking in the pub?

Milner picked up a yellow and was struggling to cope with US players, he risked a second yellow. I think his substitution was justified. and Capello can't be faulted for English GKs' incompetency. had Green not screwed up like that, England might have gotten another goal and won it in the end. his howler really damaged his teammates' confidence.

The only thing Capello got wrong IMO was bringing on Crouch. given his towering height you'd think he'd add to the team's aerial threat but that's not even true. he's a terrible header of the ball!

I must say, England were simply unlucky. To concede a goal like that, and then waste about 6-7 goal opportunities... USA were barely in the game, save a few glimpses which were more a fault of England's back-line then their own doing.

And Wright-Philips is a waste of a talent.

potential winner...my ****!

He wasn't comfortable on the left, but he could have done more. Lennon was great I thought, and Lampard was missing in the first half but really took control of the midfield in the second half

Well, look below for a neutral point of view, I'm not the only one that thinks we dominated. The US forum I use basically agreed, the US relied on both keepers to scrape a point.

The US weren't without their chances either. 2-3 clear goalscoring opportunities IIRC.

The one were they hit the post was a good chance, Green made a meal out of that one too. I guess England will be rotating their keeper every game.

Tomorrow will be pretty blah in terms of WC action. I think I'll give the WC a rest for a day

They had a few speculative shots or a few headers that went wide but didn't really trouble. Altidore's shot that Green somewhat redeemed himself on was about the only great chance they had. The amount of times we beat their full backs and smashed balls across the box, only for Timmy Howard to deny us was annoying.

Oh, and if Heskey isn't a good striker, nobody is. Easily the best performance by a forward so far this tournement. Won practically every header and everything England did came through Heskey. Super target man.

Shame about the 1 on 1 he missed then

He's a great target man, his striking abilities? Questionable

Well Kurt did say he was a good striker didn't he...i was responding to that part....target man sure he does a job

I actually thought Gooch was really good. Probably the best defender around. It was their fullbacks whose positioning was weird.

Like I said, Howard put on a World class performance. Definitly the MotMs for either side, Heskey and Howard.

He did miss the 1-on-1, but he's simply not a goalscorer. People can say "strikers are meant to score goals" all they want, but he is not a striker. He's a deep lying target man, he essentially plays in front of the midfield and links up p lay. He isn't there to score goals, Rooney is and unfortunately he didn't wake up until the last 15 minutes.

Yeah, striker was the wrong word, he's just a target man/foward.


Agreed. That last ditch slide on Lampard as he was about to shoot was superb.

he was goal.com's MOTM

I tought he was good at second half, he was the only defender that I noticed

to kurt, why isn't ashley young on the NT?

In all honesty, being named Goal.com's MOTM is like being named the best competitive eater at Weight Watchers.

i'm too familiar with their credibility, don't worry just missed the match and got excited when i saw that

I seem to be more quick-witted when I'm bummed out about something (in this case, it's over you-know-who's departure).

i felt the same about sheva's departure, it's ok i know how bad it feels, atleast your lost was the end of an era, mine was the beginning of sheer greed.

goal.com are a bunch of idiots. If you watch the first half, he was the one continuously screwing the offside trap, not their fullbacks like Jack claims. He redeemed himself in the second half somehow. Still, he's embarrassing at best.

great result for us...i don't think England played as well as some of the other posters on here do. i think our midfield completely outclassed England's midfield. I felt like, in the first half, our midfield really had more control over the game than England did. And with the star power England has, that should not have happened. Lampard was nowhere to be seen most of the game.

England may have had more break aways, but our defenders, for the most part, got back in time to stop anything from happening. Didn't help my nerves though! This was our weak point going into the world cup though...so it really didn't surprise me that they let some few. I'm hoping they learn to play better as a backline as the world cup progresses.

Besides the last 10-15 minutes I think the US also did a good job keeping Rooney out of the game. That was my biggest surprise. You could tell he was getting really frustrated towards the end of the game.

I'm also saw one comment about Gooch sucking. He played great. Made a lot of key slide tackles and, for the most part, kept a lot of crosses out of the middle. He also out ran Rooney on a breakaway. For someone who hasn't played in so long, I thought he played very well. If he keeps this progress up I think he could play a big roll for Milan next season.

Tim Howard is a beast...now people know why we have no shame calling him our best player on the field. He is just insane. No fear whatsoever.

If I were England I would seriously invest in the development of my goal keepers. Green being the #1 goalkeeper is just embarrassing.

If we can keep playing this well, we should have no problem advancing.

all time world cup record with England 1-0-1...I'll take that

This.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the US control some possession in this match. I thought for sure it'd be like 70-30.

Realistically England and USA should go through tbf However the draw can benefit algeria if they can win an slovenia also

Hope algeria win tomorow and hold there own against england and usa

Can't agree here. Other than the odd long ball counter, you offered nothing going forward. I believe we had at least 6 or 7 more shots, I'd assume more shots on target too. I'd say we dominated the middle of the field and posession, I'd be surprised if it was less than 60/40 in our favour.

The praise for Tim Howard says it all. A keeper can't really be MotM unless the team is massively under pressure.

I actually think Slovenia will finish 2nd, behind England. The US full backs aren't good enough and their front 6 isn't able to create enough. I think they'll beat Algeria and then the States next week.

The American fakeness is being annoying. Before the game it was "We can win this, for sure we can beat England".. yet they act like it's a great result because they did worse than they thought? Their arrogance is even more annoying than that of United!

The US don't stand a chance of passing if they play like they played tonight.