\n<\/p>\n
The euphoria generated by the rout of Germany and Beckham’s instantly-iconic goal against Greece soon, however, gave way to apprehension, as England were drawn into the dreaded ‘Group of Death’ for the 2002 tournament, alongside old enemies Argentina, Eriksson’s native Sweden and potential bogey team Nigeria.<\/span><\/p>\n To make matters worse, Beckham, Gary Neville and Steven Gerrard all pulled up with serious injuries at the end of the club season, and Eriksson found himself plastered all over the front and back pages of UK newspapers for cheating on his long-term girlfriend Nancy Dell’Olio with television presenter Ulrika Jonsson.<\/span><\/p>\n It was feared that Eriksson’s private life would distract from England’s preparations, and his final squad selection drew plenty of criticism. He opted for Wes Brown and Danny Mills over Jamie Carragher and Phil Neville in defence, omitted Steve McManaman and Frank Lampard from the midfield and only picked five forwards, with Andy Cole announcing his retirement from international football after being overlooked.<\/span><\/p>\n “There’s a major concern as to where the goals are going to come from,” former <\/span>Sky Sports<\/em><\/i> pundit and Scotland international Andy Gray said on <\/span>BBC Radio Five Live<\/em><\/i>. “If Michael Owen is not on form, then where’s his back-up? Who is going to do it if Michael doesn’t?”<\/span><\/p>\n Eriksson was deemed to be playing it too safe with eight defenders, but did take one big risk by including Beckham, who was given a six-to-eight-week recovery timeline after suffering a broken foot in United’s Champions League win over Deportivo La Coruna in early April.<\/span><\/p>\n The captain’s rehabilitation, and the meaning of the word metatarsal, was pored over by fans and the media up right up until the big kick-off, and beyond. Gary Neville and Gerrard were not able to play through the pain barrier, though, and the latter’s replacement, Danny Murphy, also fractured his foot just eight days before England’s opening game, with West Ham’s Trevor Sinclair called up to fill his spot. Kieron Dyer and Nicky Butt were dealing with knocks, too, leaving some experts to claim the campaign was doomed before it had even begun.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The euphoria generated by the rout of Germany and Beckham’s instantly-iconic goal against Greece soon,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10446,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/playball.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}