I feel far more crushed by the England loss, sealed just under an hour ago by penalty kicks, than I expected to be. I was secretly hoping they would make it through to the final, while reveling in the hilarious case of national masochism that is England when one of their national teams is playing poorly.

I thought it was a truly heroic effort by the England squad after Rooney went off — they actually moved the ball better without him — and Portugal did not impress me in the least. Indeed, their operatic diving and flopping and moaning was shameful and annoying and wimpy, including Ronaldo’s bit of theater — he doesn’t deserve to be the man of the match in my book.

It’s an interesting thing about this year’s tournament that you end up with two teams in the semi’s who, in my opinion, don’t really deserve to be there based on their standard of play so far (that would be Portugal and Italy) and two teams out who arguably should still be in — England and Argentina. Germany deserved to make it through, but it’s an unfortunate by-product of the draw to have Argentina out, and Italy and Portugal in. And England certainly weren’t pretty, but they were tough and manly and didn’t flop their way into success. Unlike the girlish Italian and Portuguese sides.

Life, sport — unfair they be.