100 To Go...

In exactly a century of days, Munich's stunning new stadium plays host to Germany and the mighty Costa Rica to herald yet another World Cup. They come around so quickly these days, don't they? England played their final warm up game before the mid May squad announcement with a narrowly deserved victory over Uruguay - a side they hadn't beaten since 1969. But with 15 minutes to go, an England win looked as likely tonight as a moon landing. The visitors took the lead midway through the first half with a strike surely as good as any England have ever conceded. Our supposed "first" team looked sluggish and off the pace but with the removal of Captain David Beckham came a renewed vigour. His replacement Shaun Wright-Phillips, in addition to another substitute in the form of Peter Crouch, started to turn the screws. And how appropriate that on the day Chelsea legend Peter Osgood sadly passed away, the man of the match and player who ultimately won the game now plays for Chelsea. If there were any doubts than Joe Cole was the man to fill the problem position on the left, well, they were dispelled tonight. His trickery set up Crouch's equaliser and Cole himself fired in the winner in the third minute of injury time from a cross by Wright-Philips.



The thinking in the England camp is that the manager only wants four strikers so I'll say here and now that if Rooney, Owen, Crouch and Defoe stay injury free, they're on the plane to Germany. Crouch used to play for my team and the cries of "sign him up" at a pre-season friendly in Brentford six years ago seems a far cry from the - literally - heady heights he's now reached. Osgood would have also been smiling down on the lanky striker, pleased that a similar player might well be England's impact player this summer with his enthusiasm for the game, heading ability and - yes - deceptively good first touch for a big man. "Osgood is good" was the chant that reverberated around football grounds during the 1970s...but with more England caps and goals to his name already, could Crouch be better?