England don't scare us, says Santa Cruz

By Doom127
in The Sporting Arena

 Share

Recommended Posts

Contributor

Doom127

Posted
Posted

Paraguay striker Roque Santa Cruz has warned group rivals England against expecting an easy passage through to the FIFA World Cup? knockout rounds.

The Bayern Munich star has recovered from a cruciate ligament injury that saw him miss most of the Bundesliga season and is likely to line up in attack for the South Americans. And the 24-year-old centre-forward cannot wait to have a crack at rivals England in Group B's opening match on 10 June as the Paraguayans aim to qualify for the last 16 for the third tournament in succession.

Though Sven-Goran Eriksson's team are favourites to top their group, Santa Cruz believes the expectation may weigh heavily on English shoulders. "The group is good for us, there are many that are far worse," Santa Cruz said in an interview earlier this year.

"People get very excited when they see you are drawn against England because they have all these superstars. Maybe some people think we are unlucky to get them in our group. I don't see it that way. What about the teams who are playing Brazil or Germany in their group? Do you think they are saying 'fantastic, at least we didn't get drawn against England'?

"Out of all the top teams we could have had in our group England are probably the best one for us. Before every World Cup there is always a lot of talk about England but they never perform to their expectations."

A tall and rangy centre-forward, Santa Cruz stood out from an early age, finishing several seasons as top scorer during his childhood with Olimpia in Paraguayan capital. He was elevated to the club's senior ranks as a 16-year-old, and he helped them win back-to-back titles in his first two years as a professional in 1998 and 1999, when he was Paraguay's player of the year.

He signed for Bayern in 1999 and has been a fixture at the German champions ever since, although he was struggling to command a regular first-team place when he was injured. The Paraguayan's experience of German football has left him tipping the host nation to emerge as one of the key teams next month's finals, and he rates them as a bigger threat than England.

"For me, Germany are far more dangerous," the Paraguayan said. "Even when they are not in form they can fight to get important results and perform better than is expected."

Santa Cruz has also become a cult figure in Germany, and even had a pop song 'Ich, Roque' recorded in his honour by a rock band. And if things go according to plan in Germany, Santa Cruz will be giving his fans plenty to sing about.

http://fifaworldcup.yahoo.com/06/en/060515/6/6sgc.html

Grand Master

Martyn

Posted
Posted

Santa Cruz is a good player, but he has not really got that much better than he was four years ago. I remember when England beat Paraguay 4-1 in a friendly just before the last World Cup, so I think we have a good chance against them, but I am not taking anything for granted.

I love the war of words between footballers. The best one was that player who said Beckham is a scaredy cat :rofl:!

EDIT: I found it :D!

Paraguay international Delio Toledo has fanned the flames ahead of his side's World Cup date with England in bizarre fashion by branding captain David Beckham a 'chicken.'

Toledo, who is contracted to Real Zaragoza, has launched a remarkable attack on the Real Madrid star, branding him a coward.

Toledo insists he has the measure of Beckham having come up against him in Liga action.

The Three Lions take on the South Americans on June 10 and Toledo is relishing the opportunity to do battle with Sven Goran Eriksson's side and a tussle with Beckham.

"He is a chicken, when you fight for possession against him he jumps out of the way," said Toledo.

"I don't have any problem in playing hard against him to take the ball and not letting him have it easy."

Toledo believes Beckham is integral to England's hopes but believes his threat can be negated.

"They depend on what Beckham does but as he is a chicken we can get a positive result from that match," he continued.

Despite his rebuke of the 31-year-old, Toledo concedes the former Manchester United star is a talented performer.

"Beckham plays very well. He knows how to hit the ball into dangerous areas. I know him well so I know how to play against him in the World Cup," he added.

"I want to play against him so I hope the coach selects me."

  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
Veteran

M.F.D.K

Posted
Posted

England will kick ass, and win the bloody world cup you will all see, ive seen this in my dream, we beat argentina in the final after beating brazil in the semi and argentina beating france ;)

good dreams usually remain dreams :p but i'd like to see England win coz its the country i live and i support ;)

This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.

  • Posts

    • Kdenlive 26.04.2

      By Copernic · Posted

      Kdenlive 26.04.2 by Razvan Serea Kdenlive is an acronym for KDE Non-Linear Video Editor. It works on GNU/Linux, Windows and BSD. Through the MLT framework, Kdenlive integrates many plugin effects for video and sound processing or creation. Furthermore Kdenlive brings a powerful titling tool, a DVD authoring (menus) solution, and can then be used as a complete studio for video creation. Kdenlive supports all of the formats supported by FFmpeg or libav (such as QuickTime, AVI, WMV, MPEG, and Flash Video, among others), and also supports 4:3 and 16:9 aspect ratios for both PAL, NTSC and various HD standards, including HDV and AVCHD. Video can also be exported to DV devices, or written to a DVD with chapters and a simple menu. Video editing features: Multi-track editing with a timeline and supports an unlimited number of video and audio tracks. A built-in title editor and tools to create, move, crop and delete video clips, audio clips, text clips and image clips. Ability to add custom effects and transitions. A wide range of effects and transitions. Audio signal processing capabilities include normalization, phase and pitch shifting, limiting, volume adjustment, reverb and equalization filters as well as others. Visual effects include options for masking, blue-screen, distortions, rotations, colour tools, blurring, obscuring and others. Configurable keyboard shortcuts and interface layouts. Rendering is done using a separate non-blocking process so it can be stopped, paused and restarted. Kdenlive also provides a script called the Kdenlive Builder Wizard (KBW) that compiles the latest developer version of the software and its main dependencies from source, to allow users to try to test new features and report problems on the bug tracker. Project files are stored in XML format. An archiving feature allows exporting a project among all assets into a single folder or compressed archive. Built-in audio mixer Kdenlive 26.04.2 changelog: Remove not needed actions from render info, fix rough size calculation for rendering. Fix clip sometimes not inserted in timeline when moving vertically in bin drag. Fix transcoding from clip properties. Cleanup render profile audio quality. Use percent based value for audio quality, and adjust the range accordingly per codec. Fixes bug #520750 Enforce even numbers for render width/height. Fixes bug #520737 Fix nightly flatpak - disable rnnoise until implemented. Fix missing initialization. Edit mediacapture.cpp. Fix document unnecessarily marked as modified on opening, triggering a backup request. Fix incorrect detection of missing and remote clips causing unwanted backups. Fixes issue #2194 Fix tests. Fix tmp files copied to wrong location when setting project folder. Fixes bug #467740 Fix color clips not selected on creation. Use QFileInfo instead of QUrl/QDir to try fixing Windows shared drives. Fixes bug #451413 Fix timeline preview incorrectly invalidated when a track with effect duration changed. Fixes bug #514541 Fix missing var. Display paths in native format in render widget. Fixes bug #520428 Simple splash: fix pressing return always triggered the same button. Minor update to simple splash. Fix unwanted clips added to timeline and cleanup. Fixes issue #2190 Minor layout improvements to welcome screen, add Quit and Open shortcuts. Fix broken welcome dialog layout in tiling compositors. (craft) Limit the number of CPU cores used during a Windows build with mingw as some .cpp files are memory intensive to build. (kde-ci) Limit the number of CPU cores used during a build as some .cpp files are memory intensive to build. (kde-ci) Cleanup old entries. Another fix for animation crash. Fix uninitialized function - crash on create animation. Another attempt to fix MacOS permissions. MacOS: fix bundle release version. Fix MacOS plist path. Fix MacOS build. Explicitely link against Qt::Core. Download: Kdenlive 26.04.2 | 128.0 MB (Open Source) Download: Standalone Executable View: Kdenlive Home page Get alerted to all of our Software updates on Twitter at @NeowinSoftware
    • Here's how to watch the Xbox Games Showcase today and what to expect

      By LoneWolfSL · Posted

      Here's how to watch the Xbox Games Showcase today and what to expect by Pulasthi Ariyasinghe The June games showcase week has been a packed one, with everything from major presentations like Sony and Summer Game Fest to indie-focused reveals coming in almost every day. Now, it's almost time for another big one, with Microsoft bringing its Xbox Games Showcase back later today. This is a double feature too, with a Gears of War E-Day deep dive also being attached to it. For anyone wanting to tune in online, the 2026 Xbox Games Showcase is kicking off at 10 AM PT | 1 PM ET | 6 PM BST | 7 PM CEST later today, June 7. The event will be available to watch on the official Xbox YouTube (4K 60FPS), Twitch, Facebook, Steam, Amazon Live, and other portals. Separate livestreams for American Sign Language and Audio Description will also be available. "This year marks 25 years of XBOX, and this Showcase is poised to be a true celebration, offering world premieres, new gameplay, fresh updates, and more for a swathe of projects we cannot wait to share," said Microsoft about this presentation. With a new CEO behind it that is pulling off some interesting moves, Xbox may have some surprises to reveal today. New looks at first-party games like Halo Campaign Evolved from Halo studios, Fable from Playground Games, InXile Entertainment's Clockwork Revolution, Mojang's Minecraft Dungeons II, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 from Infinity Ward are to be expected here. We may finally get to see the new Blade from Arcane Studios in action and a new Persona game from Atlus at the showcase too. Surprise announcements may also arrive from other Microsoft-owned studios like Bethesda, MachineGames, Ninja Theory, Obsidian, Rare, World's Edge, or Blizzard. Considering how every new release nowadays is staying away from November and December to avoid Grand Theft Auto VI's release, any launch dates Microsoft announces will probably skip those months as well. Once the Xbox Games Showcase ends, Microsoft will immediately kick off the Gears of War: E-Day Direct. This deep dive into the upcoming prequel from The Coalition should attach gameplay footage and perhaps a release window to the highly anticipated project.
    • This could exactly be how our Sun ends but it's not as simple

      By PeterTHX · Posted

      People in the '50s and '60s had the same attitude, and we're still here over a half century later.
    • 007 First Light review: Satisfying spy adventure that James Bond needed

      By Nick H. · Posted

      So after some fiddling I was able to get it to run at a pretty stable 30FPS. I'm slightly surprised about how much fiddling I had to do to get there though given what I thought was reasonable hardware: Processors: 16 × AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS w/ Radeon 780M Graphics Memory: 16 GiB of RAM Graphics Processor 1: AMD Radeon 780M Graphics Graphics Processor 2: AMD Radeon RX 7700S I think I could do it better if I use Linux rather than Windows, Windows RAM usage is stupid without stripping the system down. But once I got it working in a reasonable state, it was so awesome! I felt like a new Bond! If anyone has any advice to get things going a bit smoother FPS-wise, I'd appreciate it.
    • Hi my name is Olivia and I am from Australia

      By +Nik Louch · Posted

      Something is rotten in the state of Denmark Australia

  • Recent Achievements

    • Dedicated
      Mark Spruce earned a badge
      Dedicated
    • Collaborator
      conkir earned a badge
      Collaborator
    • Rising Star
      olavinto went up a rank
      Rising Star
    • One Month Later
      lamborghiniv10 earned a badge
      One Month Later
    • Week One Done
      lamborghiniv10 earned a badge
      Week One Done

  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      482
    2. 2
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      256
    3. 3
      Steven P.
      74
    4. 4
      +Edouard
      70
    5. 5
      FloatingFatMan
      69
    Show More

  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!