Kazakhstan v England. Meh

Ollie Irish

6th, June 2009

7 Comments

ukraine_squad.gif
It required a mighty effort on my part not to illustrate this preview of England’s game in Kazakhstan with a picture of Borat, as so many other websites have done. Instead, I chose to use a photo of the Kazakhstan national team, because I think it’s disrespectful to suggest that Borat is the only thing worth knowing about the country. That’s wrong, and I refuse to deal in such stereotypes.
So, to the game… Well, meh. Even though it’s a proper, for-real World Cup qualifier, I can’t get too worked up about it, even if in Almaty they’re calling it the biggest game in Kazakhstan’s history. I guess the visit of Wayne Rooney and co. is a big deal, but the Kazakhs have no chance of qualifying, so I don’t see it myself.


I’m sure England will get the job done this afternoon, even though most of the players are knackered after a long domestic season. Fabio Capello doesn’t do tiredness, of course, which is one of the reason why he’s such a good manager - he doesn’t care for excuses, and the players know it.
The game should be much closer than the game at Wembley, however, which England won 5-1. In case you forgot:

And England in training for today’s game:

So, er, meh. Even if England lose in Almaty (very unlikely, as this Kazakhstan team is poor - they lost 5-1 to Belarus too), they’ll qualify easily for South Africa, and with the match being shown on Setanta, I’m not anywhere near the edge of my seat for this. I know I should be. Sorry.
Probable England starting line-up: Rob Green; Glen Johnson, John Terry (c), Matt Upson, Ashley Cole; Theo Walcott, Frank Lampard, Gareth Barry, Steven Gerrard; Wayne Rooney, Peter Crouch
Prediction: Kazakhstan 0-2 England

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7 Comments

  1. jeneria says:

    Yes, I imagine England will breeze through this and everyone will get all excited at how they are teh awesome and then they’ll go flat for three matches and a new coach will be brought in and people will lament that Rooney didn’t show up or that Gerrard can’t play with Lampard or that Walcott got hurt or that Barry and (insert name here) got into a scrap or that Beckham wasn’t used as he should have been or that any number of things went horribly wrong.
    But they’ll win this match at least.

  2. scott says:

    I think it will be a difficult first half but Kazakhstan concede a lot of goals in the second half of their games. anyway I like how borat is edited in that picture :D

  3. Markieboyuk says:

    I think England will have great success!

  4. Tom says:

    That picture is of the Ukrainian national team, not the national team of Kazakhstan.

  5. ollie says:

    What Tom said.

  6. chris says:

    england did breeze through the game – the scoreline was a little flattering though and i felt that the outpouring of optimism after the game wasn’t really founded. i discuss it in my blogpost here:
    http://thebleacherbums.wordpress.com/2009/06/07/64/
    we’d appreciate any visits/comments…we’re new
    cheers

  7. padim7gr says:

    If you were more observational, you would see that the “Kazakh” squad you’ve used is actually UKRAINE, NOT KAZAKHSTAN!

    You can easily disguise;
    I) The Ukraine National Team emblem
    II) AC Milan, Chelsea and Dynamo Kiev legend, Andriy Shevchenko (#7)
    III) Bayern Munich ex-player legend, Anatoliy Tymoshchuk (#4)

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