By Myles Palmer
I was on my bike this morning.
My Star-Trac bike at the gym faces Channel 4 and has BBC1 on my left and MTV on my right.
So at 8.30 am I can choose between cartoons, Rob Bonnett and J.Lo.
Rob said Owen and Vassell would be the front pair. He predicted 2-0.
A youngish group on MTV was doing Handbags & Gladrags in the Rod Stewart arrangement.Stereophonics.
On the radio Art Garfunkel was singing a Stevie Wonder number, a very good song.
The bad news is that all the great songs have been written.
The good news is that all the great goals haven’t been scored yet, as we saw when Bergkamp dazzled Dabizas and when Shevchenko left Juventus utterly gobsmacked with that powerfloated cross-shot which arrowed into the far top corner.
I went downstairs to the pool and as I was swimming I was thinking about Matt Jansen, half-striker.
To you he might be Matt Jansen, Blackburn striker. Matt Jansen, former public school boy,Matt Jansen, the player The Sun says has a virus.
But to me Jansen is like Beardsley and Sheringham, a creative half-striker, a link-man. If he started he could play in Scholes as well as Owen.
I read The Guardian in the gym cafe and as I walked home in the sunshine I thought : Yes, Sven will play power for an hour in Japan.
It will be Heskey and Owen, like Liverpool. If speed and aggression doesn’t work Sven will bring on more skilful craftsmen like Fowler, Sheringham.
Power for an hour, then Sven will try finesse. He has looked at all our players and not seen much finesse, so he has decided to go with youth as much as he can and with power as much as he can.
Michaelmania will explode if the skipper scores tonight.
Owen, the acceptable face of millionaire football, is usually brilliant or rubbish, nothing in between.
But he can be abysmal and still score two goals because he has volcanic ambition.
I just have a feeling that it is the turn of Paul Scholes to remind us why he is in the team. But who will give him a pass tonight?
How can Scholes join in the play if all the passes are to two superfast torpedo strikers who either shoot or lose the ball?
That is why I wanted to see Matt Jansen. Because he is the only English player who is like Litmanen.
Martin Keown? Please don’t get injured again.
ENGLAND PROBABLE TEAM :
Seaman; G. Neville, Keown, Southgate, Bridge; Gerrard, Hargreaves, Scholes, Dyer; Vassell,Owen.
PARAGUAY PROBABLE:
Tavarelli (Olimpia); Arce (Palmeiras, Br), Ayala (River Plate, Arg),Gamarra (AEK Athens), Caniza (Santos Laguna, Mex); Struway (Libertad), Gavilan (Newcastle Utd), Paredes(Porto), Bonet (Libertad); Santa Cruz (Bayern Munich), Cardozo (Toluca, Mex).
Kick-off: 8pm.
Live on Sky Sports 2.
Highlights 10.40 BBC1
17th April 2002.