From Belarus With Love

As some had predicted, the match played just few hours before our humiliation VS England proved to be the most important result of the evening. Despite losing out 5:1 Capello’s boys, we are still very much in the race for that runner’s up spot, which would see us live to fight another day for our South African visas. Luckily for us, it turned out all those talks of Belarus taking it easy with their neighbors proved to be folly, as the hosts were pretty much the team that gave it all on Saturday and with a bit of luck they could of even went on to win the encounter (ended 0:0). But, we can’t be greedy, not after what we did to Croatian fans around the world just a mere few hours later.

I won’t delve much into detail, though I will give out my expert opinion with saying that we sucked, big time. First and foremost, Bilic had a night off, as his experiments on left back proved to be hazardous to say the least. He started with Pokrivac there (who I might add, hasn’t played in that position since his Varteks days, and that was like 3 or 4 years ago), only to reinstate Pranjic (who had started in a left midfield position) once it was obvious Pokrivac couldn’t handle Aaron Lennon down that side (not that Pranjic did a better job, mind you). It was a miracle we were just 2:0 down at halftime, as Runje had to be in form to produce some excellent saves from the never ending English onslaught. But, as if to make sure the night had no Croatian heroes, Runje went on to miss kick a return pass from Krizanac, basically handing the ball for Rooney to tap in for 5:1, the scoreline with which the match finished. No one associated with the Croatian F.A. in any way (be it players or staff) had the slightest notion of excuse to walk out of Wembley with heads held high that night. A collective failure, and one from which we now must find a way to bounce out off.

And how ironic is it, that the same team we spurned from the last big competition, now hold the threads of fate of our own qualifying chances. Fate, so often predictable in its unpredictability. We face Kazakhstan on the 14th and Ukraine play England on the 10th of October, so there’s a chance our last qualifying match will be nothing more than a sad formality. But we can’t think like that, we can only hope Capello and his England perform their last task of the qualifiers with the same approach they had in the prior matches. And if in the end of this mess we do indeed manage to qualify, we’ll have a long list of names of people we’ll have to give our thanks to. But for now, though probably undeserving of it, we’ve been given a lifeline. Thank you Belarus.