Wow, PPL Park is pretty. The City of Chester should be proud, although I'm sure they'd be a little happier if Glenn Davis stopped hitting the "urban blight" card quite so hard.

Chris Seitz is also having a fantastic game, which is honestly good to see. It wasn't as if he was making Robert Green money, so having him be synonymous with crummy keeping must have been difficult. The Union look really terrific today – it's a good day for MLS.

Okay, fine, no one cares NOW, but down the road, they will. Besides, is there any other news in the soccer world? Do I have to be the forty-thousandth person to pile on Fabio Capello?

Capello did everything but blame the ball, perhaps because he did already.

Twenty-four hours later Bob Bradley doesn't look so bad after all.

That's assuming that England would have been happy with a 2-2 result. To say that England were vulnerable on counter-attacks, aside from being a bit obvious, implies that England simply weren't going to continue going forward. It asks us to assume that England's defense was capable of shutting out Germany for more than twenty minutes at a time.

It asks, in short, to disregard the evidence of our eyes. We don't need video replay to tell that England got its ass kicked.

Unreasonable minds, however, may differ:

Who said this?

1. Geoff Hurst
2. Clint Dempsey
3. Diego Maradona
4. The keeper who earlier let in goal #2 between his freaking legs, and goal #3 off his arm. Presumably on the third goal he was still heartbroken over the Lampard miss.

If the goal had been missed in, oh, I dunno, the 86th minute, then yeah, you've got a real case for saying it changed the result. England had over a half left, plus momentum. The United States overcame a near-perfect equivalent situation when Clint Dempsey's go-ahead goal against Algeria was called back. So why couldn't England have continued their positive momentum?

If the England team and coaching staff hadn't tried to pass the buck, then maybe the call for goal-line replays would be received on its merits. Instead, it's the latest and least plausible of England's continual excuses.

(EDIT – while we're here, a proper discussion of goal-line technology on its merits. David Bolt bravely takes the con, your fellow commenters pile on him for the pro.)

Much better was Javier Aguirre's example.

Well, okay, so Aguirre was passive-aggressive towards the refereeing. And okay, maybe Mexico could have handled adversity a tiny bit better. And maybe some of Aguirre's lineup decisions were Bradleyesque (Bozo Bautista?).

But it's always better to take responsibility.

….

….

Just like Landon Donovan.

….

Fine, it's none of our business. If Maury tells him he's the father, he'll step up, and that ends the matter. I understand that.

But that kid better not be playing for England in twenty years.