Really, I have to say that it’s an overall excellent draw. There’s always a good chance some teams with underperform, but really this draw makes for some good, interesting matches now, and suggests some great possible matchups at the later stages. There isn’t a proliferation of groups of death, so it’ll be a more reasonable end winner and runners-up.
It may simply be because I actually have some good hope for England this time around, but this is looking to be an excellent World Cup.
Cripes, I forgot about that one!
At the risk of stating the obvious, that was a truly awful result.
It’s possible that England were so shell-shocked by a national sporting embarrassment of the highest order that we subsequently underperformed against Spain as well. A 1-0 victory over Spain (instead of a 1-0 defeat) would have ensured a place in the final group on goal average.
Thanks for only using size 5 when you could have gone for size 7. 
There’s a more than better chance that I’ll never get to write score line like that wrt England v USA in football, so have to take every chance I get. Plus, it seems you English (Chez Guevara = English?!?) have a bit of a blind spot for stuff like this.
To be fair, if I were a betting man I’d have money on England to beat the USA, win the group and possibly go 3-0 in group, although 2-0-1 seems more like their style. I think that the Semis at least, given the draw and brackets, is a reasonable goal for England. For the USA I’d be happy to make it to the knockout rounds, thrilled to reach the quarterfinals and shocked to reach the semis. I’ll be ecstatic if we could draw against England and stunned if we were to beat them.
I’m sure about the ‘English’, but not so sure about the blind spot.
It seems to me that our worst or unluckiest defeats loom as large in the national consciousness as our greatest victories. 1950 won’t be forgotten for a while yet. In fact, the only event that would push that defeat further to the back of the mind is another reverse to the USA next time we meet, if it results in a failure to qualify.
On form, the group looks like an England/USA 1-2 finish. However, and as we all know, form sometimes goes out of the window in football, which is what makes it such a fascinating game.
I love the World Cup. Bring it on!
Some additional analysisfrom Nate Silver of 538.com. Includes chances of winning the group besides just advancing and other stats.
I noticed that the US has the lowest advance % of the teams chosen to advance, so while our draw might be better than average, there’s no reason to be complacent.
Hell, there are still documentaries being aired “debunking” the loss to West Germany in the 1970 quarter-finals.
What’s to debunk? “Football is a simple game - you play for 120 minutes, and then the Germans win (on penalties).” 
Well, back then England used to lose to the Germans in open play. Or even win, once in a while.
England totally dominated Germany at football up to and including 30 July 1966, winning 7 and drawing 1 of 8 matches.
Since then, our record is P19 W4 D1 L14. Those defeats naturally include reverses on penalties in the 1990 World Cup and in Euro 96. The sad fact is that England haven’t won a game against the Germans that really matters since the 1966 World Cup, except for the 5-1 victory in Munich in the 2002 World Cup qualifying rounds. Germany qualified despite this loss, and went on to do significantly better in the finals.
I quote these statistics merely because I hadn’t realised quite how alarming they are.
Link.
(I’ve made two attempts to make my figures agree with the Wiki summary but this I have failed to do. I’m not going to bother again because (a) readers will get the picture anyway and (b) it is a depressing exercise in itself).
Heh. The ball never crossed the line. 
20 June 2010 - The day Italy slumps to a goalless draw with New Zealand, allowing Paraguay and Slovakia to go through (and giving New Zealand their first ever point in a football world cup).
I would be very happy with that…where can I sign up?