SportsDirect.com Takes A Look At England’s Preparations For The World Cup

With only 10 days until the World Cup 2014 kicks off, England’s preparations are off to a good start with a 3-0 win over Peru in the international friendly last Friday. The game at Wembley Stadium was England’s last match on home soil before the World Cup begins. During the game, Daniel Sturridge, Gary Cahill and Phil Jagielka all scored a goal each to secure the 3-0 win. Following their first friendly, the England team flew over to Miami, where they will be staying for the next week or so to play their next two friendly matches between Ecuador on the 4th June and Honduras on the 7th June. After these two matches, on the 8th of June the team will head to Rio De Janeiro ready for the start of the World Cup.

England’s first game takes place on Saturday 14th June against Italy and will be played at Manaus Stadium. Shortly after they will play Uruguay at Sao Paulo on the 19th and Costa Rica at Belo Horizonte on the 24th June.  England’s approach to the World Cup is to study each game in detail and analyse potential opponents’ game tactics and weak areas. Football analysts Steve O’Brien and his assistant Mike Baker will compile the facts and statistics from each game and feedback to Roy Hodgson in Brazil. This research should give the England team a good insight into how to play against each competitor and know where their strengths and weaknesses lie.

With only 10 days to go, the opening match venue in Sao Paulo is not yet ready for the opening. Due to on going delays the Corinthians arena will be less than three quarters full for Sundays last test match to assess whether the stadium is ready. As it stands, with temporary seating unfinished, only 40,000 fans will be able to attend the league match. All facilities need to be tested and up to standards. Fire fighting authorities have not authorised the host club to open one of the seating areas and only 5000 fans will be able to watch from another unfinished seating  area. With so little time, the pressures on for the stadium to be completed.

The starting places for the England team are yet to be confirmed, however there is speculation as to whether Wayne Rooney will start, while Daniel Sturridge looks a strong possibility following his performance against Peru last Friday. Prior to kick off Roy Hodgson has told the boys they must sing that  national anthem and belt it out loud and proud. This will help build up emotions before they play. Fans across the UK are now gearing up for England’s first match in just under two weeks. With pubs set to open later and games being aired on national television, everyone will have an opportunity to watch the match live.

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SportsDirect.com Take a Look at the State of Play in English Football

With recent news that English footballers account for less than a third of all the minutes played in the Premier League and the World Cup 2014 Qualifiers drawing to an end, SportsDirect.com take a deeper look into English Football.
Football is one of, if not the, most popular sport in England with people up and down the country spending their Saturday’s at the stands of their beloved football team and their Sunday’s playing 5-a-side for their work or pub team. England also has more than 40,000 association football clubs, which is more than any other country.
There is no doubt about the passion and devotion that football brings to England, however with the World Cup in 2014, the lack of English footballers in the Premier league has caused concern. Rio Ferdinand recently spoke to The Mail on Sunday with regards to this matter and said: "If you look at a lot of teams, there are England players who aren't playing for their clubs - yet we're hoping to go to a World Cup and do well!"
England don’t have a good track record when it comes to winning tournaments and this could be down to the fact that English players aren’t playing for English teams. The State of the Game Study by the BBC showed that, after England, French and Spanish players play the most minutes in the Premier League and Argentina and Belgium also have a fair amount of players in the Premier League.
This is down to many factors, one of them bring money. Foreign players are a lot cheaper than British players and Alan Shearer for one has stated that this among with managers not having much time are the main difficulties for England.
However, a recent article in the Guardian stated that the performance quality from English players is on the rise;  recalling that seven of them had made the top 20 this season and were training for the World Cup 2014 Qualifier games. So maybe it isn’t all doom and gloom after all.
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