The World Cup is pants!

12.18.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Tue 20th Jun 2006

Ahead of England's final group game this evening against Sweden, I thought I would write a bit about the World Cup so far - both football and non-football.

England have qualified already, tonight's match will decide if they qualify as group winners, who they play and who else qualifies. England have certainly not played like World Cup winners so far - it is said they build slowly, but even then they don't win (bar 1966 of course!). I was very pleased to see Rooney come on against Trinidad and Tobago and he looks set to start against Sweden but surely our hopes cannot rely on just Rooney can they?

My two top tips at the moment are Argentina and Spain - if they both win their groups, which is likely, they will avoid each other until the Final. So my current prediction is Argentina to beat Spain in the Final. Other teams that were expected to do well, Brazil in particular, just haven't impressed me so far. Having said that I am now bound to be wrong and Brazil or Germany will probably win.

The team I really want to qualify for the next round (that haven't already) is Trinidad and Tobago. So England need to beat Sweden tonight and Trinidad and Tobago beat Paraguay, it then comes down to goal difference.

The silliest bot of the World Cup came on Friday when the Dutch fans had to watch the match against the Ivory Coast in their pants! Dutch fans turned up in patriotic orange lederhosen, the lederhosen carry the name of a Dutch beer, Bavaria. FIFA made them take them off as Bavaria is not a sponsor! How ridiculous!