Morning:
8°c
Football years being a little like dog years squared, it feels like a lifetime ago that we were treated to the most tragicomic vista in the history of the English international team.
Looking for all the world like a beetroot-faced drag act still determined to give us his Mary Poppins despite having left his outfit at home, Steve McClaren promenaded along his technical area, brolly raised, while the fruits of his sublime incompetence blossomed on the turf.
In fact, it is of course merely 12 months since that unforgettable night, and not an iota of doubt survives that it was England's salvation.
Had England drawn that match and qualified for Euro 2008, the facade of success would have disguised McClaren's abundant idiocy sufficiently to preserve him in his post.
He would now be shepherding the side either to elimination from the next World Cup or at best an appearance of Erikssonian bemusement in South Africa. Instead, thanks to Scott Carson's catastrophic efforts in goal and Darren Bent's wretched late miss — both of which were echoed, with neat symmetry, in Berlin on Wednesday — the temptation to anticipate the summer of 2010 with genuine relish becomes ever more difficult to resist.
The friendly against Germany … but no, that's too oxymoronic even for me.
This week's non-competitive fixture in the Fatherland was, to my mind, the high point of Fabio Capello's magnificent first year in charge. Given the 4-1 demolition of Croatia, this may strike you as nonsense. Yet there was never much doubt that the first choice XI, that “golden generation”, had more than enough talent, if properly organised, to trouble decent opposition, and even destroy it on the break when all the cards fell as perfectly as they did in Zagreb.
What even the insanely optimistic never dared imagine is that there might be sufficient depth to the squad to give England, invariably cursed by pre- and mid-tournament injuries as we are, a serious chance of progressing beyond the usual quarter finals.
The performance of the reserve side Capello had no choice but to field in Berlin challenges that orthodoxy, if not ridicules it. It's true that the hosts put out a second string team of their own, and that they were atrocious, but a year ago you wouldn't have risked a quid on an 11 including Stewart Downing, Matthew Upson, Glen Johnson and Wayne Bridge coping with relegation strugglers from Mongolia's equivalent of the old Isthmian League.
As replacements at the highest level, and even maybe challengers for places in their own right, none of them now looks out of their depth. Chuck in the pace and power of Gabriel Agbonlahor and the elegant simplicity of Michael Carrick's passing, and this squad begins to look worryingly capable of major achievement.
I say worryingly, due solely to the neurotic need to touch wood whenever the distempered hound of hope is let off the leash in an England context.
More shoulders might pop out of their sockets and further metatarsals be broken. Don Fabio might be abducted by aliens. Brian Barwick could be restored to the FA throne and hire the late Bertie Mee as manager.
With our luck nothing can be ruled out, and if a year in the life of an international football team is an eon, the 17 months until the World Cup constitute infinity and beyond.
For now, though, we need do no more than survey this astounding recovery, and praise the Lord that the unparalleled fiasco at Wembley 12 months ago proved the lifeboat that rescued England from drowning in the rain.
Wenger must stop captain insensible provoking a mutiny at Arsenal
The rise of William Gallas up the rolls of unconvincing captains continues to impress. He has now climbed above Birds Eye and Sensible, and is closing in fast on Bligh himself.
If Gallas's revelations about the mutiny in the Arsenal dressing room at half time during last month's lively home draw with Spurs doesn't cost him the armband, Arsene Wenger requires urgent psychiatric help.
Wenger should of course have fired him in the tunnel at St Andrew's last season within seconds of his reacting to Birmingham's late equaliser in the style of a two year old denied a Sherbert Dib Dab in Tesco.
Why he didn't hand the captaincy to Cesc Fabregas then and there, however distressed Gallas may have been by Eduardo's horrifically broken leg, remains a mystery. But if the news of his captain blabbing about a plethora of hissy fits and the inadequacies of his colleagues — on the record, mind you, to the Associated Press news wire — doesn't do the trick, nothing will.
When Gallas and Ashley Cole swapped clubs a few years ago, at first it seemed like Chelsea had much the worst of it. Now you could wonder whether Gallas was a Trojan Horse sent into the Emirates by Chelsea to undermine Arsenal morale with very public shows, on and off the pitch, of disloyalty.
It took the Greeks 10 years to sack Troy. It should take Wenger 10 seconds to decide to do the same to Gallas
Use warp speed to get out, Martina
What in the name of all the saints is she doing in the jungle with that lot? As she was quick to remind a fellow sleb who referred to her as “one of the best tennis players ever”, Martina Navratilova is probably the greatest woman who ever raised a racket, albeit you might make a case for Margaret Court and Steffi Graf.
Richer than Croesus and globally revered, she lacks two of the three possible motives (penury and obscurity) for anyone normal to endure Robert Kilroy Silk for the amusement of strangers.
The third is ego, and clearly she has plenty of that, but even so, what a price for a global sporting titan to pay for a bit of attention. It could be worse (it might have been her, and not Mr Sulu, who rubbed the cream into Joe Swash's sore buttocks). But not much.
It's make or break time for Hatton
A pivotal moment approaches for Ricky Hatton, who fights the useful Paulie Malignaggi in Las Vegas on Sunday morning (GMT). Rather more at stake than the Ring Magazine belt and IBO title is Hatton's credibility.
If he looks sluggish and slow, even the rapacious bandits at Sky Box Office will think twice about charging for the privilege of watching him again.
This is not an easy fight. The brash New Yorker may not be as malign as his surname suggests, and lacks a killer punch but he gave Miguel Cotto a run for his money two years ago and cannot be discounted.
Whether Hatton has recovered from the hiding he took from Floyd Mayweather Jnr last December, and to what extent the hiring of Floyd Snr as his trainer has remotivated him, we must wait and see. But anything less than a convincing win and retirement beckons for Ricky.
