Not a classic tournament and one that will be remembered (if at all) for all the wrong reasons. One only hopes for future events that FIFA will address what they can and leave the rest well alone.

Three 'teams' went out on penalties where the team had the players but were let down by its management. The worst example being Argentina. I would suspect some large ammounts of German money can only explain their manager's choice of substitutes which meant they did not win their game (and the World Cup).

England certainly had the players but perhaps the management team that was good enough to qualify was never going to be good enough to provide the inspiration needed win it?

France again had the players but not the management.


I feel Italy won because although they did not have the players of the quality that they usually send but had a management team that knew how to make the most of what they had.

There were teams like Brazil and Ghana that provided a lot of entertainment but these did not make it past the quarter final stages.

The home team found they had a manager who could certainly raise the performance of the players available to him to a level that surprised everyone (except possibly me) - but it should be recognised that (like England) this level was not enough to win against their quarter final opponents. But to their credit they can still score in penalty shoot outs - if you are still awake to see this.

The impression was of a number of good sides - but with no outstanding player or strategy emerging and a lot of refereeing problems remaining to be solved. FIFA's inability to deal with things like 'simulation' and their botched attempts - probably contributed a lot to the overall unsatisfactory impression of the 2006 event.