The England v Germany match has "draw" written all over it. We all know that you have to go back to 1966 to find the last time England beat Germany in a major competition, so the record book certainly does not boost England's prospects.
Having said that, though, I expect to see a rather different England from the one which played so well for half an hour against Portugal and then so badly for the next hour. Kevin Keegan has had a "clear-the-air" meeting with his players and the upshot may be that he lines out with a 3-5-2 formation tonight.
With Steve McManaman and Tony Adams both out through injury, Dennis Wise and Martin Keown look likely to come into the side. I can see Wise forming a useful defensive midfield trio with Paul Scholes and Paul Ince, whilst I imagine Keegan will stick to the two forwards who started against Portugal, Alan Shearer and Michael Owen.
I have two major worries for England. Firstly, this German side may not be the best we have ever seen but they are sure to be disciplined, to make England work hard and they are unlikely to repeat the sort of mistake that allowed Romania in for an early goal in their 1-1 draw in Liege.
Secondly, German coach Erich Ribbeck will possibly try to stifle England's most dangerous player, David Beckham, by telling his left-sided midfielder, Christian Ziege, to play up on him, to run at him and force him to drop back and defend. Germany, too, know that a draw could be good enough for them to stay on course for the quarter-finals whereas England obviously have to win.
All the signs are that we could be in for a dour and not very pretty war of attrition in which a draw may be the most likely result.
After watching France's 2-1 win against the Czech Republic last night, I felt a bit sorry for the Czechs. Given the way they have played in Euro 2000, I'd have to rate them as one of the five or six best sides in the world and yet, here they are, already packing their bags for home after only two games.
You can only say that the tournament draw dealt the Czechs a very poor set of cards, putting them in easily the toughest first-round group, opening up against The Netherlands and then following that up with France.
I like everything about the Czechs, their movement, their system, their organisation. Players like Pavel Nedved in midfield, Karel Poborsky on the wing and Jan Koller up front are all very useful.
Even when they made a mistake to concede France's opening goal to Thierry Henry, they still stuck to their task and deserved their equaliser. For a while it seemed as if the game could go either way but, in the end, I felt the French had done just about enough to deserve to win.
What you have to say about France is that they gave the performance of a really good team last night. Not that they played really well.
They did not. Yet, without performing to their best, they still saw off one of the best sides in the world and that says a lot about their overall quality. For the time being, I still rate them as the best we have seen in the tournament, so far.
(In conversation with Paddy Agnew)
