This is an extra blog for today. If you’re not interested in football, skip it and go to the earlier posting . . .

Here’s a few comments from the Spanish press after England’s two-sided performance last night. Not to mention their two even-worse earlier performances:-

Robinson [the goalkeeper] has good reflexes and sometimes stops the impossible shots. The trouble is, he can’t deal with the possibles.

The members of the England team play as if they’d just met yesterday

It is a badly composed team. The coach fields too many specialists and seems to have little knowledge of his players

England certainly have dynamite but don’t use it.

The team lacks a goalkeeper; the midfield is undefined, some players are operating out of their normal positions and the coach just hasn’t got things right. A disjointed team.

I couldn’t agree more. And for this abject failure to forge a great team from some of the best players we’ve ever had Eriksson has been paid 6 million euros a year! No wonder the manager of the Swedish team described this as obscene. Thank God he couldn’t keep it in his trousers and will be departing the scene 4 years before the end of his contract. Too late for this competition, though.

I certainly won’t be watching against Ecuador; it would be too painful to see us go out against such opposition. If England win, I’ll review my position – at least for the first half of the next match – as it’s conceivable we could play well against Argentina or Holland but still go out with honour. Meanwhile, I’m just grateful my real team is Spain. And that my piano teacher is Argentinean.