St. George cross

Rooting for Paraguay against England, despite picking England to win this group. So far the English have looked pretty flat; they're up 1-0, but only on the strength of a (bent) free kick by Beckam that went in off the head of a Paraguayan player in minute 3.

ABC's pro-English tilt feeds my cheering for Paraguay... it's interesting, there's a couple seconds delay on ABC vs. Univision. Appropriate that Spanish-speaking fans in the U.S. are experiencing the World Cup before everyone else.

The English fans have been pretty restless, they know this is not a good opener for their team, even if they're able to pull it out. The first-string goalkeeper for Paraguay was injured in the opening minutes as well, but England's been able to do nothing.

England traditionally collapses under the weight of the great expectations from its fans; the criticism will be searing if an English player fails to score in the game. This does not look like a World Cup winning side; as ABC's pretty insightful Marcelo Balboa said, it looks like they need 11 balls out there, the stacked English team isn't playing together. By the way, why do the Brits field one Olympic team, but separate World Cup squads?

The English supporters have just broken into a rendition of God Save the Queen, with 5 minutes left in regulation they must feel like the game's over. How great would a last-second goal from Paraguay be!

Now Al Michaels throws in the fact that there's never been a 1-0 game decided by an own goal in the World Cup. Wow... the poor English, they can't win even when they win. They're gonna get blistered by their tabloids.

Game ends, Paraguay had a late flurry, but doesn't make up for their odd lack of urgency the rest of the match--maybe getting a couple of yellow cards early took the steam out of them. An odd result, neither team seems very high or low. For some reason the stadium speakers are blasting out Andrea Bocelli.

AFP photo of Carlos Paredes and Paul Robinson via FIFA.