wow that would be unlucky

England played the best I have ever seen but Rooney should be sacked as IMO he is no footballer - and as for Italy they played FANTASTIC much more of an attacking team which is good to see.

Yeah, easily done - especially if you're jumping up and down like a lunatic after your team has just scored in the World Cup...One misplaced bottle is all it takes.

Gotta feel for the guy though... to have reached the premiere sporting competition of a physios chosen sport and then get sent home on the day of the first match through a careless accident. Hope at least it heals cleanly and quickly for the poor sod.

Exactly never underestimate the Azzurri - they will always come up trumps - COME ON ITALY

I agree totally except I would go on to add a FANTASTIC performance from the whole Italian team and again very unlucky with 2 shots at goal hitting the post.

I wouldn't be overly harsh on England anyway. They played very well against a good Italian team, created chances and only lost by a one goal margin.....this was always going to be a very tough opening fixture.

Yeah, I've been browsing the comments on the Guardians match report... you'd think that the English performance was on a par with Spains meltdown.

I thought they had a good, solid game.... some dodgy defending and Rooney looked uncomfortable but a much better performance than the last World Cup. Unfortunately Pirlo had a hell of a game and the rest of the Italian squad performed consistently. One goal difference doesn't exactly mean their team is the embarrasing failure some England fans are making it out to be.

Wish the Irish team would try to put in a performance like that.

Or chasing the ball for 90 minutes because they gave up possession too easily by picking an unbalanced team.

Yeah, people go into the game claiming they have no expectations and we're not that good anyway, and then still react as if the world has ended after a narrow loss.

Speaking of the Irish team, our draws against Costa Rica and Italy in the last fortnight don't look so bad now, and if Portugal were to beat Germany tomorrow, we could say we actually didn't too badly at all with a severely under strength team.

As for England, they actually played very well last night and weren't 'that' far behind a strong and well organised Italian team.

They gave up possession of the ball far less than any England team in recent memory. In fact, surprisingly, for a first, they looked pretty comfortable in possession of the ball.

England played pretty well all in all, and lost by a single goal to a good Italian side. A draw would have probably been a fair result on the balance of play.

It's a bit arrogant to think that England can just roll over teams like Italy, McIntosh.

Yes, that does sound like a generic comment that sounds like it's said out of habit.

What I found refreshing is that the team looked like they cared more than at any other time I can remember.
It's just that England are still a team growing into what they could be.
They looked like they could almost be a brilliant team. But just aren't quite there yet.

As has been said by others the defending was lacking, and I agree with the pundits who said that it seemed like when Italy had a free kick and delivered a set piece the defence appeared to take it as a moment to take a breather and lost concentration.

I don't think any reasonable person can't question the desire or efforts of the team last night.

Sure, the defending etc can be questioned, but not the desire. Such comment says more about those coming out with the cliched crap than anything else.

It was a decent effort from England full of desire, effort and dare I say it... craft.

They just happened to lose against a decent Italian side, but certainly gave them a game.

The way it's gone so far I wouldn't be surprised if the teams all finished on equal points. I think that happened with one group in the last world cup.
Because I can imagine Uruguay picking up their game, we can't be sure that England will play as well in the next match, there is no guarantee that the teams will be consistent from one match to another and Costa Rica may not be as easy to defeat as they first appeared to be, they have proven that they can score goals.

Hah - yeah, good point. Maybe the team isn't quite as awful as I thought... Maybe we only need to get 3 or 4 players of South American standard, instead of 7, to qualify for the Euros...

Unfortunately the last time I felt anything but despair about the national team was in the early 90s

I absolutely agree. It's become a bit of a cliche to talk about the England players as overpaid, precious flakes who couldn't give a damn. It really didn't look that way last night. The likes of Sterling, Welbeck and Sturridge ran themselves ragged. I don't even think Baines and the centre backs can be faulted for effort, even if they were overwhelmed tactically.

Looking back with a bit of hindsight - I've far fewer regrets about last night than I've had about an England loss in quite some time.

They didn't put enough pressure on the ball. That's what happens when you play against a team with 4 central midfielders by putting out a team with 2 central midfielders. You are giving up that area of the field and it allows the other team to pick passes at will. A better idea (and what a top coach like Mourinho or someone would do) would have been to pick a side stronger in midfield or at least switch things around by half-time when you've watched your left-back getting doubled up on continuously. Not just allow it to continue to be a problem.

2nd paragraph - I don't agree. I thought the Italians were clearly the better side and deserved to win. Tactically they were superior. Prandelli 1-0 Hodgson. England attacked well in patches but were nothing special. They could still go through though.

3rd paragraph - I don't think England can roll over teams like Italy and I never have so not sure where you got that from? (I'm not Lawro). I'm not even English but don't let facts get in the way of your assumptions! "Arrogant", indeed.

Oh, I guessed that.

Yes I agree with that completely. I think people are naturally taking the last two matches of the group as a way to measure how the group will continue, justifiably.
But I don't think many predicted that the opening matches would have played out like that. I expected the group to be the opposite to how it looks right now in the group table.
I think that England really are in the group of death and Costa Rica played much better than I think most gave them credit for.
I don't think any of these matches will be easy for any of the teams, any one of the teams could perform better than expected or completely underperform.
The England and Uruguay match will probably be a struggle, and if they draw that match it will go down to the last matches of the group to decide who progresses.
Italy look good, but they too will have two more hard matches if Uruguay are still in it and Costa Rica will really believe in themselves right now and will compete hard to progress.

I look at a couple of the other groups like Groups E, C and H and I'd much rather England were in one of those groups than the one we've ended up in.

So how can you call me arrogant for expecting that England should roll over Italy (in your view) when

(a) I'm not English?
(b) I never once said I thought England were better than Italy?

That makes no sense. Arrogance is overestimating yourself.

Trust me, I was full of doom and gloom after the draw to Costa Rica and the defeat to Portugal, but this tournament may be about to show us that we were playing exceptionally strong teams and we were severely under strength ourselves. We do need all our best players fit to be in with a shout for qualification and even then it's probably going to be very tight.

Here's hoping... The excitement and passion of Italia 90 and Big Jack's Green Army seems like a life time ago!

Right, off to watch some fights in the Monaghan - Tyrone GAA. game... GAA totally beats the World Cup in the level of in-game head butts, blood and fractures

I agree with you when you say that we looked technically adept.
What I noticed was that for the most part we looked to pass the ball more accurately, and more quickly, without tripping over own own feet or botching passes which go nowhere near where they're supposed to. and also manage to play fluid attacking football. I think that's one of the reasons we just looked more like a capable team than we have done for many years.
Even if we didn't get through the first round, which is a very tough group, I'd still say that something feels very right about this team.

Can see us getting a euro place under the expansion, there might be 16 teams better than us but there surely isn't 24!

I was looking up the permutations of what happens on equal points, I could see Group D going to drawing of lots!