England 2 Sweden 2

First game for me in the pub, The Windmill at the top of Micklegate. We'd been playing badders beforehand though and I had to go back to the car to drop off my stuff and got caught in an unseasonal rainstorm so I was soaking wet by the time I got back to the pub. Predictably, it was packed so there was a decent atmosphere.

The first half turned out to be the best that England had played in the tournament so far (not that that's saying much). Owen managed to injure himself within the first two minutes and was replaced by Peter Crouch, thereby doubling the ex-Norwich contingent on the pitch, Matty Jonson in the Swedish team being the other misfit. We were passing the ball nicely, Hargreaves was doing well at breaking up Swedish attacks, Rooney looked lively and Joe Cole was faffing around doing stepovers for fun. The first goal was an absolute cracker - Sweden cleared and it fell to Cole who spanked it on the volley from miles out into the top right hand corner.

Sadly, the second half nowhere near matched the first and we went from looking pretty respectable to looking pretty ropey. Sweden scored from a set-piece and some particularly shoddy defending on England's part. Gerrard came on and scored a nice headed goal, then Larsson spoiled it by scoring in the last minute (helped by some more schoolboy defending).

Once again then, more negatives than positives - Owen looks to be out of the tournament, the defence in the second half was shambolic, Beckham in particular had a poor game (although he wasn't the only one) and we have no strikers that can score goals. Despite that though, we managed to top the group and go into the knockout stages for a game against Ecuador on Sunday.