A proud moment for Manchester City, as for the first ever time a product of the MCFC Academy played in a World Cup finals match for England. Shaun Wright-Phillips, who just squeezed into the England squad ahead of Adam Johnson, came on for James Milner after half an hour.
Milner was chosen to start on the left of midfield, but after struggling with a virus all week he looked some way off the pace of the game. He arrived at three or four tackles a week late and was booked. The situation was unsustainable, and Wright-Phillips' energy and diligence was preferred to Joe Cole's wit down the left. Shaun got on the ball a fair bit, linking well with Ashley Cole and once putting him through to the byline. His big moment came when Wayne Rooney slid him into a good goalscoring position. He decided to open out his body and try to curl it past Howard, which was surprising given his natural instinct there is to go hard and high at the near post. The ball went straight to Howard.
It was great to see Shaun playing, and he did quite well, but that was probably our second best chance of the second half. I imagine when Gareth Barry plays against Algeria then Steven Gerrard will move to the left and Shaun will be benched.
England drew the game 1-1.
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3 comments:
thought he did ok on the left, even though he is not suited to that position. Indeed i expect him to make way for barry.
A fan of your blog...
My apology for posting an irrelevant comment. (Though You might wanna shed some light on it.
Watching, Germany vs Australia
"This Kid Ozil (Mesut) is special". City were linked earlier. But will be a coup...
Watched that game, too. Special is right. The Bundesliga correspondent on the Guardian podcast has been raving about Ozil all season, and he was an outstanding man of the match against Oz. Based on that performance (admittedly against an old, slow and extremely out of sorts Australia), the huge raps he's been getting and Mancini's supposed policy of buying young and promising from the European leagues he could be the playmaker (with speed!) a lot of us have been dreaming about (actually, never stop dreaming about). The commentators in Oz have been mentioning Arsenal wanting him to replace Fabregas. But surely his price has gone up 5mill and if he can put together some more performances like that will rise even further, out of reach of Wenger and others, but obviously still within Mancini's reach. Ozil plays for Werder Bremen; surely at 21 he could wait another year for Champions League. I would love to see him in a City shirt. Love it.
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