I just can’t tell you how much I love the Czechs. They’re one of my favourite teams in world football. They’ve got the bloody lot – style, flair, imagination, vision  haircuts (even then, Karel Poborsky looks almost human these days and, no longer, like a member of Atomic Rooster. And as for Nedved … well, you have to be a REALLY good player to get away with a mullet in this day and age!) What do you expect from a country with a poet as president?! I could watch them all day. Like their capital city they are a beguiling mixture of beauty, awe and spectacle.
Interestingly comic pre-match build-up. Yanks in silly hats - always guaranteed a good laugh, that. A shot, in the second half, of the same two fans, by now with faces like smacked arses, was rubbing it in, somewhat: Could it possibly be that the German director was someone who fully supported Gerhard Schroeder’s anti-Bush-in-Iraq stance?!

‘The Star Spangled Banner’, however, remains a GREAT national anthem. The Czech one, by contrast, sounded like Genesis. Five fouls in the first 120 seconds suggested somebody’s days on the pitch were numbered (including some really cynical Body-Czeching).

Then the Czechs just took over: Big Jan Koller’s bullet. Rosicky’s spanker (they call him “the little Mozart” in Prague and I’ll be a few North Bankers are licking their lips at the thought of him in the Arse’s team for the next few seasons). Nedved pulling the strings in the middle. Even Koller seemingly doing a hamstring just before half time didn’t seem to phase them (although, long term, that could be a big blow to their chances of going the distance).

In the second half they strolled around - getting the Americans to do all the work - imperiously without ever descending into strutting arrogance. They were clinical, efficient, beautiful. Rosicky nearly broke the bar in two with a thunderbolt and then, a few minutes later, ran half the length of the pitch to score a dazzling third.

I don’t want this to turn into a love poem to the Czech Republic but, after a performance like that, it’s so hard not a praise them, baby, like you should. “They’re strong, the Americans, but they’re not unpredictable” noted the BBC commentator shortly before the end. He’s right. And that predictability could be ruthlessly exposed by the Azzuri next up.