International football never stops. We try and take a break by working out way out of Euro 2008 and then we get thrown in a World Cup qualifying group the following week. And what’s more we have to face up to the team who secured our summer off next year, Croatia. While that may sound bad, it could have been much worse, we won’t have to face any of the truly big guns. Whatever you think of our chances of beating Croatia, surely Italy or France would have been much, much more difficult. So, let’s look at that group in full.
Croatia, England, Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Andorra
Well, how difficult can that be. We can only think of three players in the group we have heard of outside England and Croatia: Alexander Hleb, Andriy Shevchenko and Andriy Voronin. Not such scary stuff. Though of course that is what we thought last time, and then Steve McClaren came along. Do we have a better chance this time?