After reviewing the Lionel Messi and Darijo Srna incident, UEFA have decided to take a second look at the alleged head butting and could punish the Argentine with a 2 match ban. Like the Eduardo incident, UEFA deem this aggression an unacceptable part of the game and will be clamping down on this kind of behaviour for the good of football.

UEFA hope that their tough stance will act as a deterrent to other players looking to lash out unnecessarily and improve the image of football throughout Europe.

A spokesman for UEFA had this to say:

“We will not accept any negative actions in our game, whether it be diving, cheating or unnecessary aggression and will always take the appropriate action.

“In cases like these, the most important thing is to keep our punishments consistent.

“Otherwise we would just look like idiots and be accused of witch-hunts.”

Personally, I would like to congratulate UEFA on their balanced and well thought out approach that will give football and the governing bodies a lot more respect in the future. Clamping down on all the negatives will improve football tenfold.

Update!

UEFA have just produced a video which Steven Gerrard has generously volunteered to be featured in, showing fellow footballers how to dive without being punished.

I’m not sure why they would do this, but that’s UEFA for you.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Abk9JSDBra4[/youtube]

This will be the last thing I write about England, because the whole thing is tiresome, depressing and just a complete joke. I’ve talked about player quotas, why they don’t deserve to qualify and how everyone shouldn’t underestimate Croatia.

But what I think goes against the mainstream media.

And now, the stupidity has got even worse.

FA Chairman Geoff Thompson said today:

“Like every England fan, we are all bitterly disappointed that we have failed to qualify for Euro 2008, and I know Steve feels that disappointment more than anyone.”

Really?

I wish I could feel Steve McClarens dissapointment too, because I could do with 2 million quid in my back pocket for somehow managing England to a failed qualification campaign.

I’m sure every England fan could do with feeling ‘McClaren’s disappointment’, as you get a £2 million payoff for the privilege!

The world has truly gone mad.

I will admit though that I thought Sven was a poor manager for England, and we couldn’t do much worse. Well I stand corrected. At least Sven bloody qualified for the major tournaments.

McClaren should really refund all those England fans that turned up to Wembley with their families and watched last nights quite frankly disgraceful display from a bunch of over-hyped, over-paid and pathetic excuse for players.

They simply couldn’t be arsed!

And that was so disappointing.

Steve McClaren called for pride, passion, attitude and character from the players last night.

I saw absolutely none of that yesterday.

Croatia epitomised EVERYTHING England are not. They didn’t need to win, they didn’t have to try, but because they were wearing their national shirt they played for the fans, for their country.

They have pride, they are grateful and honoured to represent their country, and understand what international football is all about.

I’ve seen a hell of a lot more ‘passion and pride’ from Israel, Russia and Croatia in this years qualifying campaign.

It’s not about fancy sponsorships, football boot deals or money.

It’s about giving everything when you have the distinction of wearing the England shirt. Northern Ireland and Scotland might not have qualified for next summers tournament, but they did their country proud.

Can you say that about England?

Finally McClaren has realised what I’ve been saying for years. That Paul Robinson is complete rubbish. I asked a few weeks ago how many goals tubby had conceded against Arsenal and the general consensus was around the 40 mark. Good job!

There’s also been a lot of talk about Beckham and whether he’ll reach 100 caps, but McClaren has dropped him too in favour of Shaun Wright Philips.

It looks like the soon-to-be-fired England manager is going with a 5 man midfield of Gerrard, Lampard, Barry, Joe Cole and SWP, although you would assume the Liverpool man would play just behind Crouch like he’s done for his club so many times.

And the back four is rumoured to be Wayne Bridge, Sol Campbell, Joleon Lescott and Micah Richards.

I would feel more comfortable if David Beckham was playing tonight, because at least then Crouch would get some decent servce!

And I would feel even more comfortable if England needed to win the game. England play at their best when they have to win, and if that was the case I would predict a 2-0 or 3-0 scoreline – no question.

But knowing a draw is good enough can be a burden and if the scores are still level after an hour then we’ll end up sitting back and inviting pressure. Then one little mistake or one piece of magic could all but end England’s hopes of qualification.

So we know Croatia won’t have a better chance to win at Wembley.

Ever.

Ferdinand, Terry, Rooney and Owen are all out.

And with bookies offering 7/1 odds no-one is giving Croatia a chance in hell.

But surely it’s not going to be that easy is it?

And tactically McClaren isn’t exactly the best.

Arsenal’s Eduardo Da Silva isn’t setting the Premiership on fire as yet, but for Croatia that is a completely different kettle of fish. He scored the opening goal (against Paul Robinson, who else) in the game in Croatia and he has 13 goals in 20 international appearances.

That’s impressive for any nation.

He is second in the qualifying goalscoring charts only behind Northern Ireland’s David Healy.

And when you consider the teams in the European qualifying groups, and the better service their strikers get, you start to understand how dangerous Croatia actually are.

Yes, they lost to Macedonia at the weekend, but the conditions in that game were quite frankly horrendous and it was their only defeat of their qualifying campaign so far. And you would think the prestige of playing at a stadium like Wembley would spur the Croatians on to at least have a go at England.

If Israel can beat Russia, then Croatia can beat England.

Expect fireworks tonight.

Because if England don’t score in the first half then things could get edgy!

Nope, you didn’t just misread the headline. I did write it in capital letters so you could have hardly missed it.

Although I personally think they’ll qualify anyway.

But I’m just sick to death with the circus surrounding England.

Not to mention the constant disappointment and under-achievement at every major tournament I have seen them in.

So why don’t I want England to qualify?

Because of the ridiculous views of Steve McClaren, Steve Gerrard, Steve Coppell and Steve Ferguson. Sorry, I mean Alex Ferguson.

As people have already pointed out, it seems the whole England setup and English media are gearing up for an unsuccessful qualification campaign to Euro 2008 and the ‘foreigner’ issue is the perfect subject to sell more papers and cause more controversy.

What sells more than blaming those ‘damn foreigners’ eh?

Nevermind the fact England haven’t won anything since 1966.

It must have been because of the huge influx of foreign players coming in during 1967. I do apologise about forgetting about that, it was a long time ago you see.

You wouldn’t mind if there was some intelligent debate from the media or the England coach and players but saying English players don’t get a chance and blaming foreign players doesn’t hold any water. And just because you repeat it over and over again doesn’t make it true. It’s like speaking to someone who doesn’t speak your language and to help them understand you REPEAT IT OVER AND OVER AGAIN SLOWER AND LOUDER. It doesn’t matter how many times you do it you still look like a complete retard.

And another reason England shouldn’t qualify is that they simply don’t deserve it.

I hate to say this but look at the Germans.

How many of their players would get into our national side? The fact is talent-wise, they are much worse off that England. But somehow, they easily qualified for next years tournament in a much harder group than ours!

And look at Scotland. They go into the last game of their qualifying campaign with a place at Euro 2008 in their own hands (and the best of luck to them this weekend). That is in a group which contains previous World Champions France, and current World Champions Italy! If England were in that group, they wouldn’t even have got close to being where the Scots are now. And that is the sad fact.

What does that tell you?

But can you blame McClaren and the players for their reactions?

If England don’t qualify, the McClaren will lose his job, and the players will risk being called failures until the next qualification round starts again.

So you can see why they are looking for scapegoats.

It’s a pity someone like Roy Keane isn’t currently playing for England. At least you would get an honest assessment of the situation from a player, instead of someone like Steven Gerrard who quite frankly is pathetic.

Wasn’t this the same player who was licking Sven’s arse when the Swede was in charge and then slagged him off once he stopped managing England? I would call Gerrard two-faced but he would probably think I was talking about the current state of Britain’s dental healthcare.

The conduct of the whole England setup and media has disappointed me to be honest over the last few weeks. The media seem to ask everyone their opinion on the poor form of England and they only seem to print and publish answers which blame the foreign players. The press need to be more responsible, because people believe what they write.

I vaguely remember reading a piece from Chris Waddle a while ago about how English players are over-hyped and think they have a god-given right to play in the World Cup. Good luck finding it though, since it’s drowned in an ocean of ‘player quota’ stories.

Thank God the web has blogs where people can voice their opinions and think for themselves instead of being fed constant drivel from the mainstream press.

I can’t be bothered writing even more reasons why the player quota system is badly flawed so you can read my previous piece on it here. It also includes a lot of intelligent comments from the readers so I thank them for that and for contributing in the first place.

This is really getting on my nerves now.

I’m not sure who is more retarded. The media for overhyping the issue, or the majority of the public who eat all this drivel up.

Yes, the England team is potentially looking at disaster by not qualifying for Euro 2008 and it seems quite obvious that a lot of people are looking to blame everyone else except themselves.

Quite pathetic really.

It can’t be because the manager is a shitter version of Sven can it? It can’t be because McClaren is a yes man and the FA are stupid in appointing an unproven manager in the first place can it? It can’t be because all the England players are so overhyped and overpaid can it?

Look at yourself instead of passing the blame so easily.

Am I the only one who sees that foreigners have improved the game?

Before players from abroad came over to the Premier League the standard was okay, but technically not the best. Hell, it took Arsene Wenger to arrive from Japan to instil proper eating and training methods for Christ’s sake!

No-one mentions that contribution from a ‘foreigner’ do they?

There are so many reasons why a quota on English players in Premiership teams would not work, and if people even think for a minute it would improve the standard of the national team then they are seriously deluded.

The REAL reason the national team is only average is because English players are too scared, too lazy or can’t be arsed playing overseas. Look at the most successful National teams of recent years. If you look at Brazil, most of their squad play in Europe, and a lot of the French squad play in Italy, England and Spain. And it’s the same with Argentina.

And Spain, a country which has a lot of homegrown players in their league has a consistently under-achieving national team!

The only real exception would be Italy, who are the latest world champions. Although thinking about it they have a lot of foreigners playing over there, albeit it not as many.

Do you want to know what will happen if we introduced player quotas in the Premier League?

The overal quality of the league will fall, and the top 4 will become even stronger.

All the best English players will be bought by the top 4 – as they will be the only ones who can afford them – and in turn all the other Premier League teams will have to make do with recruiting English players from the Championship.

So is lowering the bar going to improve the standard of English talent?

Surely having the chance to play with the best players in the world in the Premier League would improve the standard of the English players?

I dread to think how Theo Walcott would turn out if he trained alongside Emily Heskey instead of Thierry Henry over the last few seasons!

The FA have to look at themselves because one of the other main problems is at grass roots level. If they looked after children and their footballing development like they did in Holland, France and Italy then England wouldn’t struggle like they are now.

Seriously, the stupidity in regards to this whole issue is amazing.

It really annoys and quite frankly shocks me the idiocy of a lot of people. Someone comes up with the idea of the foreigners ruining the national team and it snowballs beyond belief.

The Premier League is so great because it is a place where only talent, skill and desire prevails. It doesn’t matter what your race, nationality, age, height, whatever – football is the beautiful game because absolutely anyone can watch, participate and to risk sounding overdramatic it brings people together.

If you’re watching Arsenal you don’t care where your fellow fans come from do you? The only thing that matters is that he or she supports Arsenal Football Club.

And it should be no different on the pitch.