Well, surely the scheduling gods had a soft spot for England this time around as they put you in with Panama and Tunisia.

I took a page out of my fantasy football prep routine and looked at some rankings from different orgs. Each by themselves are probably about as wrong as you or I, but consensus rankings are usually pretty dependable, IMO.

England's ranked a consistent 9th by 3 out of the 4 orgs I looked at (Mirror, CBS Sports, Sporting Life). The Guardian is a bit more pessimistic and ranks England 13th.

Still.... Panama has rankings of (gasp) 31st, 28th, 23rd, and 28th again). Tunisia is ranked 29th, 31st, 25th, and The Guardian didn't even bother ranking them.

Also, interestingly enough, Colombia, England's likely opponent in the round of 16, is ranked lower than England by all four orgs (though admittedly not by much).


So let's see. I understand the pessimism but who knows?



I myself would like to see Brazil win and pull away from Germany in all-time Cups.