I fully expected Belgium and England to just have a friendly training run draw like the Dutch and French did prior to that game, since there was little to gain for either side.
I was pleasantly surprised that Belgium didn’t just chuck it in, and disappointed that England didn’t even seem to care about trying to save it once they went behind.
Every Pom to a man - including you - were quite happy with your “strategic” loss and the opportunity it gave you. So clearly you were of the opinion that the team tanked it on purpose.
As it stands, England are out having only beaten Tunisia, Panama, and Sweden during regular play
But it was a good loss.
We are an average team and would have been beaten 3 nil by Brazil.
So by losing it gave us our only chance of ever making a final in my lifetime - by taking advantage of a soft draw.
I'm under no illusions as to England's quality. We're well below the elite teams and somewhere just above the likes of Sweden.
We're probably on a rung with the likes of Uruguay and Croatia.
That's our level. I know this because we haven't beaten a world class side in the knock out phase of a major tournament since Euro 96. And even that took penalties to beat Spain.
Before that you'd probably have to go back to the 1966 World Cup to when we beat one of the big guns.
So we are an average footballing nation and that strategic loss gave us our only chance of making a world cup final. So of course we were happy about it.