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We're playing Denmark away this saturday. If we can beat them I would say that our participation in South Africa is pretty much in the bag. If we lose, we're out. A tie, and anything can happen.
Sweden has been terrible in this qualification. We've shaped up recently though and against Hungary we were actually really, really good - only to play with our arses against Malta, just getting away with 0-1.
It's sad really... We have incredible up and comers - I think the under 21 European Championships proved that - but we have a coach that stubbornly refuses to phase them into the national squad. It's not until the end of the qualification that he's really allowed some of these young guns to get into the fire.
To me it's always better to fail to qualify to one big championship because the young players are new and hungry but lacking experience, than it is to fail, first, one qualification because the old players aren't delivering anymore and the young players aren't allowed to play, and then second, another qualification because the new players can't handle all the responsibility put on their shoulders all of a sudden.
Anyway, I predict two European teams in the final next year. Spain vs......... Germany.
Spain because they have the best team in the world right now, and Germany because they can put a sack of red, black and yellow potatoes on the pitch and still make it to the final - with grace.
And, yeah, what do you mean what's wrong with the title??
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The novelist does not long to see the lion eat grass. He realizes that one and the same God created the wolf and the lamb, then smiled, "seeing that his work was good".
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They had temporarily escaped the factories, the warehouses, the slaughterhouses, the car washes - they'd be back in captivity the next day but now they were out - they were wild with freedom. They weren't thinking about the slavery of poverty. Or the slavery of welfare and food stamps. The rest of us would be all right until the poor learned how to make atom bombs in their basements.