I confidently predict that all of my confident predictions from now on - will be wrong. France 0 Portugal 7.

France v Brazil was a breath of fresh air and almost managed to lift me from my gloom. Credit to Brazil (and their current manager) for letting France play and to France for taking the opportunity to do it.

I am afraid that very little credit is due to Portugal. They were shown (in their last two games) to be poor side with a manager who encouraged his players that the way to win was to cheat and try and get the opposition sent off. The sad thing is that Scolari so nearly was England's next manager.

The greatest irony is that even by the use of these tactics when they had managed to get only a marginally better England side reduced to 10 men - they still could not win and Ronaldo, the scorer of the last penalty, could have taught Jacque Cousteu how to dive. Ronaldo was a disgrace and should have been sent off long before the Rooney incident and the shoot-out.

If I were living in Portugal and they were kind enough to let me stay there, I am sure that the TV pundits there would have a different view and will see Ronaldo as a hero. TV coverage does tend to be biased towards the home sides. This is a rather obvious fact. And rather than complain about this - I could always move back to my home country where I could expect the TV coverage to reflect my own bias.   

England's players have shown that they are a good Quarter final team. Most of us thought this side was better than that - but the fact that must be faced is that those who thought this - were proved wrong. It would be nice to say that England lost to a better side (as is usually the case) but sadly I do not think that to be the case this time.