So Sven is apparently to experiment with England’s formation against Ecuador. I’m all in favour of this as frankly, nothing England have done so far in this tournament has given me any belief that they have a winning formula. I know the FA wanted Arsene Wenger as the national manager on more than one occasion, and Sven’s ploy is certainly a nod to the tactic that allowed Arsenal to reach the European Cup Final.

The idea’s fine if the players can adapt to it, but Rooney is no Thierry Henry. Fantastic player, yes, but I am not sure he can fulfil the lone striker role in the way Henry manages. My suspicion is that he’d be too keen to drop deep and get more involved in the play, leaving England with effectively a 4-6-0 formation. The other query is as to whether or not the five midfielders are cute enough to actually work out the balance of going forward and hanging back in the appropriate numbers at the appropriate times. I think Carrick should have the nous to play the Gilberto position and hold – although whether or not he has the quality to actually stop anyone at this level remains to be seen. Hargreaves has more experience through his years with Bayern so playing him at right back could be a regret in this formation. Sven should trust Carragher and leave Carrick on the bench.

As for the abilities of Joe Cole, Lampard, Gerrard and Beckham, my fear is that they could all go forward at the same time leaving England exposed to the counter attack. I think that they should have enough in them to beat Ecuador narrowly, but elimination in the last eight by either Holland or Portugal is a practically inevitability. Even getting through that would leave Brazil, France or Spain to conquer before Italy or Argentina in the final. It ain’t going to happen.

I enjoyed my brief trip to Germany to dip my toe in the World Cup water, and came home just in time after seeing the news about the arrests in Stuttgart. There’s so much alcohol flowing (consumed by both English and German fans) that at some point, the throwing of bottles and chairs at each other was an inevitability. The authorities’ solution to this was the fan parks to be found in each host city, where there is plenty of alcohol but no bottles, or for that matter chairs. And a big screen to watch the games. All well and good but some fans choose to remain in bars and drink on the streets outside them. Very difficult to control, although the police in Portugal two years ago managed it by simply turning blind eye to the drunkenness, the only trouble occurring on the Algarve hundreds of miles from an England match, when the police wanted to stop the drinking and chanting continuing in the early hours and forced the bars to shut. I predict more trouble in the tournament, which will end once England are eliminated most likely next weekend.

‘A chance to make new friends’ is the tournament’s slogan. And there has been a lot of mixing with the sheer numbers going over to Germany from all parts of the world. To be honest, I have found the desperation to get tickets rather depressing, not least because every tout in the world is over there carrying around ‘I need ticket’ signs, offering 400 euros for an England ticket and then selling them on at double the price. And then there are the tales of incredibly good forgeries. I had legit tickets for England v Sweden on Tuesday and Brazil v Japan on Thursday. But wanting to attend Holland v Argentina on the day in between, I chanced my arm and was offered a ticket from a local on the make for 300 euros. The cheapest I’d been offered by a tout was 600 euros, my limit was 250 euros, but I thought, what the hell, I’ve driven 200 kilometeres from Cologne to be here and will have to drive another 200 km to get up to Dortmund tomorrow, so what’s 50 euros. The game was no classic but I was delighted to get in and experience it, so at no point did I regret spending the money (especially as the rest of my trip was done on the cheap). One of the most satisfying moments of the trip was the moment the ticket I had bought got the green light at the turnstiles after the stories I had heard about fakes. Boy was that a relief.

What I cannot get my head around is the fans who do travel over who do not pick up tickets but are perfectly content with just being in the city where it’s all going on, as were many Gooners when Arsenal played the recent final in Paris. This thing about being there only really applies if you are in the stadium. I’d find it so frustrating to be so near but on the outside looking in.

The whole tournament has been predictably well organised, although a bit of me yearns for the chaos of the old days, when fans did not have it so easy and had to use a bit of intuition to get around foreign lands to see the football. As the game has become more gentrified, in a sense such tournaments have lost a little something. The world is smaller, but the fans attending are rarely as hardcore in their dedication as they were before the Premiership started and hype made football something that everyone had an opinion on. The number of fans attending on corporate packages has undoubtedly made crowd control so much less of an issue. But when I heard of the coachloads of schoolchildren paying £400 each to travel to Germany to watch Portugal v Iran on a ‘World Cup experience’ trip, I thought, this isn’t quite right – and I wasn’t talking about the tickets they had which never materialised.

Football tourism has become a bit too popular, and by extension, the match experience a little too sanitised. This won’t change until the authorities have a change of heart and give all the tickets to fans of the competing teams in each match. Denying me the chance to see Brazil v Japan I’ll grant you, but a sacrifice I am willing to make for the greater good. Having said that, the trouble in Stuttgart is one reason that is never going to happen. All together now… ‘There were five German bombers in the air…’