After the draw for the World Cup group stage last December, British tabloid The Sun summed up the mood in England with the acronym "EASY: E for England, A for Algeria, S for Slovenia, Y for Yanks".

Slovenia captain Robert Koren, 29, doesn't mind his team being seen as the underdog in the eyes of the Group C favourites.

"I believe we can surprise people", the West Bromwich Albion midfielder told CBCSports.ca at the official launch of Slovenia's World Cup kit in London.

Hanging by a thread? So, then, after that 2-1 home win over Chelsea in this week's much anticipated first leg Champions League tie, are the Italian champions and current league leaders, Inter Milan, hanging onto their dreams of European glory by the proverbial thread?

We all know that a 2-1 away defeat is never a totally compromising result. Logic would say that Chelsea will now sail on into the quarter-final sunset. Not only does the London side need only a 1-0 home win but it will also face the return leg at Stamford Bridge buoyed by the sensation that, for an hour at least, Chelsea played almost all the good football at San Siro the other night.

It was the trial of the century and the verdict was delivered in record time. No one wavered, no one doubted, the decision was unanimous: guilty. The only problem was that the man they said was on the stand wasn't on the stand at all; ultimately, they were. The accuser had become the accused and a landmark victory had been won.

Last Sunday morning, the Madrid-based sports daily Marca, the country's best-selling newspaper, announced that Real Madrid versus Villarreal had become a day in court. It was Manuel Pellegrini on trial - a kind of plebiscite on the club' s coach. Judgement day for the man whose side had was beaten 1-0 in Lyon five days earlier. 

It is a measure of how far backed into a corner the Confederation of African Football feel they are after accusing the media of a campaign of vilification against them.

African football's governing body says "certain media elements" were out to get them in the wake of all criticism over their decision to ban Togo from the next African Nations Cup tournaments.

But there has been nothing but universal condemnation of the callous decision by CAF in the wake of the deadly shooting of two Togolese delegation members ahead of last month's Nations Cup finals in Angola.

The return from exile of Asia's highest profile players continues apace as Shunsuke Nakamura prepares to pack his bags and head for Barcelona's El Prat airport.

His final destination is likely to be the club at which he started his professional career as Yokohama F Marinos throw open their doors to welcome back their favourite, floppy fringed son.

Starter question for ten points: Which country, apart from Mexico, will also have two referees among the 30 officials at the World Cup?

Italy? No, they only have one. England? Ditto. Switzerland! Nope, Massimo Busacca will be their only representative. The - quite incredible  - answer is: New Zealand. Yes, New Zealand, that famous hothouse of world football, will send two refs to the global showpiece, Peter O'Leary and Michael Hester.

It is corny but it is true. To borrow a line from Tina Turner's bestseller, he's "Simply the best - better than all the rest". Why? He's simply grown up. Wayne Rooney is, without question, the player opponents will fear above all others at the World Cup.

The boy-man who burst onto the scene as a 16-year-old, leaving David Seaman groping at air, nearly eight years ago is now the complete footballer. Every facet of his game has been developed and improved. The raw, aggressive teenager has blossomed into the epitome of a 21st century soccer icon.

It would be unbelievable if it wasn't all too believable, incredible if it hadn't happened before.

FIFA and UEFA must despair of the RFEF, the Spanish Football Federation. As for the fans, they long since gave up on them - and on the LFP, the Spanish Football League. The RFEF and LFP, for their part, stopped caring about the fans years ago. If, that is, they ever cared about them in the first place.

"Inter more and more looks like a side that is beginning to realise its international standing. This could be their year" - Italian national team coach, Marcello Lippi, in an interview with sports daily Gazzetta Dello Sport this week.

Wishful thinking or a realistic assessment?  We always knew that Inter Milan's Champions League clash with Premiership leaders Chelsea next week was going to be one of the defining moments of this Serie A season. However, in the wake of the Champions League defeats registered by AC Milan and Fiorentina this week, the pressure is even more on the side coached by "Special One" Jose Mourinho.

A coach, it is sometimes said, should always pick his eleven best players. But what if two of them are goalkeepers?

An extreme example, perhaps. So here's another one, culled from the England team that won the 1966 World Cup.

If Takeshi Okada isn't worrying about the form of his Japan team, perhaps it's time he started.

Four games over the course of the last two weeks have yielded little for the former Yokohama F Marinos coach to be positive about and, if publicly he manages to maintain a cool exterior, the hope has to be that privately he's starting to sweat.

With the World Cup on the horizon, there will be plenty of discussion surrounding which players are likely to make an impact on the tournament.        

While most fans are familiar with superstars like Kaka from Brazil, Fernando Torres from Spain or Wayne Rooney from England, what about some of the lesser known players? Which of those players are likely to play a key role for their country in South Africa?    

Read my previous reviews of Group A, Group B, Group C and Group D.

Let's take a look at some players from the teams in Group E. 

A fortnight ago it was a non-issue. Of all the selection puzzles facing England manager Fabio Capello in the build up to the World Cup - the left back position was not one of them.

Nothing could be more straightforward. Ashley Cole would be England's starter on the left side of the back four and Wayne Bridge would be his deputy. Now, with England's opening match against the US less than four months away, there is a question mark against either of them being on the plane to South Africa.

With the World Cup on the horizon, there will be plenty of discussion surrounding which players are likely to make an impact on the tournament.  

While most fans are familiar with superstars like Kaka from Brazil, Fernando Torres from Spain or Wayne Rooney from England, what about some of the lesser known players? Which of those players are likely to play a key role for their country in South Africa? 

They hugged, they kissed, they made up and resolved nothing.

At this week's peace summit in the German FA (DFB) headquarters in Frankfurt, national manager Joachim "Jogi" Low, team manager Oliver Bierhoff, FA president Dr. Theo Zwanziger and general secretary Wolfgang Niersbach vowed to seize hostilities in the run-up to the World Cup.

Juste Fontaine was a little known player who wasn't even expected to be in the team when France travelled to the 1958 World Cup in Sweden.

But then the first choice striker, Rene Bliard, was injured, Fontaine came into the starting line up and the rest is history. Fontaine scored 13 times in a single World Cup, a record that may never be broken.

His side lost in the semifinals to the Brazil of Pele and Garrincha, two players who did not start the competition in the first team but ended it as legends.

Diego Maradona has used 102 players since taking over as coach of Argentina's national team.

One hundred and two. In just fifteen games. 102 in just over a year.

To put that into perspective, over the last year England coach Fabio Capello has called on 33.

It is, by any standards, an extraordinary figure - one that speaks of instability and uncertainty. When he named his last squad, Maradona named five players that weren't even available before trying to dig himself out of an embarrassing hole by claiming that it was a "pre-squad" list - a kind of long short list. As if it wasn't messy enough as it is.

Any sensible person would appeal with him not to add to that figure. Common sense and basic maths dictates that, much as there are those who should surely have played a little more - Juan Roman Riquelme, perhaps, although Maradona has now revealed that he will not return to the team, Gonzalo Higuain, Diego Milito, Sergio Aguero - there can barely be a half-decent Argentinean left who hasn't been called up. It's surely time to stop adding to that number.

Only it's not. Not yet, it's not. Because this weekend, something happened that means the first thing Maradona should do when he names his squad, the first thing he should do as he prepares for South Africa, is pick his 103rd player. Because last weekend something happened that hasn't happened for almost two years; something happened that has not happened since April 18, 2008.

Gabriel Milito played.

The return of Gabi

Better still, Gabi Milito played 90 minutes. Even better than that, Gabi Milito played 90 minutes and played them brilliantly. Quick, strong, assured on the ball, it was like he had never been away. He'd been out of action for 22 months with a torn anterior cruciate ligament injury, he'd missed Barcelona's greatest ever season and he'd been virtually forgotten but, said El Mundo Deportivo, "it was as if he was just coming back from a bit of a cold." A cold? It was like he'd barely had a runny nose.

True, Milito had already played, but he'd only been on for 28 minutes as a sub against Valladolid and just five minutes against Tenerife. For the first time he was in front of his own fans and for the first time he played the whole game. He probably wasn't supposed to played 90 minutes - in all probability Pep Guardiola would have liked him to get an hour or so under his belt - but in the end Barcelona's needs dictated. In the end, with additional time added during a dramatic finale, Milito played 95 minutes.

They were difficult minutes too, 65 of them played with just 10 men after Gerard Pique was sent off. Ninety-five minutes against Getafe - the only side to have travelled to the Camp Nou this season and almost matched Barcelona for possession of the ball (it finished 51 per cent versus 49 per cent, when Barcelona are used to figures closer to 65 per cent). For once Barcelona, down to ten men, did not make life easy on the defence. It certainly was not easy on Milito.

Milito started alongside Pique for 25 minutes, who was sent off. He then played alongside Yaya Toure, a central midfielder playing an emergency central defensive role, for 32 minutes until Toure went off injured.

He played 32 minutes alongside Rafa Marquez, who was sent off in conceding a penalty in the 89th minute. And then, finally, he played out the remaining six minutes on his own, with a little support from Sergio Busquets - on as a substitute just before the hour.

Little support

There was no Carles Puyol, Barcelona's inspirational captain - enjoying the season of his life - and no Dani Alves. A tougher game than anyone could have imagined, a longer one than they would have liked.

And yet Milito looked like it simply didn't matter. Almost two years later and it was like he'd never been away. He was back - and back in classic style. Tough when he had to be, quick across the ground, powerful in the air, unruffled and cool on the ball. Utterly in control. The  Mariscal, once more. The field marshal.

This weekend, Barcelona faces Atletico at the Vicente Calderon - traditionally one of the hardest trips of the season - without Alves, Márquez, Abidal, and Pique. But with Milito. Now more than ever, Barcelona need him.

Argentina need him even more.

Milito's return comes as a huge relief for Argentina and their creaking, crumbling defence - a bit of good news at long last. As one commentator in Argentina puts with a hint of concern, "Milito will definitely start in South Africa - unless Maradona has completely taken leave of his senses."

This summer, Maradona has to whittle that huge list of players down to 23. First though, he must expand it to 103. You might think he'd be mad to call up yet another footballer but this time he'd be mad not to.

Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice would say. 

Bad enough, but logical, that the Italians have to teach the English how to play football, via the person of maestro Fabio Capello. What really defies belief, though, is that the same Capello has taken on the role of spiritual confessor to the entire nation, resolving a national crisis by excommunicating England team captain John Terry.

With the World Cup on the horizon, there will be plenty of discussion surrounding which players are likely to make an impact on the tournament.      

While most fans are familiar with superstars like Kaka from Brazil, Fernando Torres from Spain or Wayne Rooney from England, what about some of the lesser known players? Which of those players are likely to play a key role for their country in South Africa?   

Read my previous reviews of Group A, Group B and Group C.

Let's take a look at a few players from the teams in Group D:

It was almost inevitable that the curse of the African Nations Cup came back to haunt Nigeria coach Shaibu Amodu.

He must have sensed it from around half time of the Super Eagles' opening match at the tournament in Angola and has had the strained look of a man under indeterminable pressure ever since.

The Americans won't win the FIFA World Cup but no one can accuse the U.S. national team of not being properly prepared for the big event.

Head coach Bob Bradley has summoned 23 players to a second training camp of the year in California, from which he'll select the team for a friendly international against El Salvador in Tampa Bay later this month.

After Africa's first World Cup, the tournament returns to South America for the first time since 1978 when Brazil hosts in 2014. And after waiting 36 years for the circus to come back to town, perhaps South America will not have to show so much patience until its next turn.

Support is growing for the idea of a joint Uruguay-Argentina World Cup in 2030. The tournament would be a celebration of the World Cup's centenary.

We don't know whether John Terry's captaincy will survive the crisis talks with Fabio Capello on Friday or indeed the next bout of unflattering revelations rumoured to be published on Sunday.

But what we do know, as of today, is that England's best player of the 2006 World Cup will sadly not be in South Africa.

In a World Cup year even the world's biggest football club can turn into a prison.

In theory any player would be happy to be at Real Madrid - or Barcelona or Villarreal or Sevilla - but many just want to break free. All they can think about is getting out of there and fast; about joining another club, any club. Anywhere but here. 

So, are Italy's Golden Oldies about to get both more golden and more oldie?

The question is prompted by the intriguing possibility that 33-year-old AC Milan defender Alessandro Nesta, who last played for Italy during the 2006 World Cup in Germany, may return to play for the reigning World Champions in South Africa this summer.

There are unwritten rules in every sport, little reminders to athletes that the game should be played in a certain manner, with honour and integrity. 

You always run out ground balls in baseball. You never look to score in the final seconds of a blowout in basketball. You never walk across another player's putting line in golf, and during the warm-ups, you never shoot high on the goalie in hockey. 

Egypt might be crowing about extracting revenge for their controversial defeat at the hands of Algeria last year, and also trying to convince us that winning Sunday's African Nations Cup final makes up for World Cup failure, but scratch just gently beneath the surface and it is burning.

It is burning the Egyptians that they, now without doubt the best side African football has ever seen, will not be at the World Cup finals in June. A paradox, but a heart wrenching reality.

It is burning them that instead, four teams they brushed aside in the tournament in Angola will be going instead - and none of them looked to convincing.

The nations of East Asia never seem to tire of playing one another.

If it's not the lesser lights featuring in the football tournament of the quadrennial East Asian Games, then the bigger guns are going head-to-head at the next week's East Asian Championships.

And if that's not enough, they're arranging friendly matches against one another in the run up to major tournaments.