England/Colombia/Romania/Tunisia

SCHEDULE June 15th ENGLAND - TUNISIA (MARSEILLE, 14:30) ROMANIA - COLOMBIA (LYON, 17:30) June 22th COLOMBIA - TUNISIA (MONTPELLIER, 17:30) ROMANIA - ENGLAND (TOULOUSE, 21:00) June 26th COLOMBIA - ENGLAND (LENS, 21:00) ROMANIA - TUNISIA (SAINT-DENIS, 21:00)

Championship candidate England will certainly take first place. The battle for second place will be between Colombia and Romania. Colombia entered the previous World Cup, held in the United States, with the status of championship candidate and full of confidence, but got its nose bloodied in its first match against Romania and did not make it past the group league. On the other hand, Romania had dictatorial rights for putting together its national team and its counter-attacks centered around Hagi, playing as one possessed, blossomed in the World Cup tournament resulting in a surprising advance to the Best 8. This time, the positions are reversed and Romania secured the position as the first seed. However, the main actor in Group G is neither of these countries, but rather England. With the youngest coach in its history, the warriors from the birthplace of soccer led by Coach Hoddle, who is still barely 40, have abandoned their traditional kick & rush, developed extremely polished technique, and are aiming to calmly march to their second championship. If the England national team can assemble talent as good as that on its championship club team Manchester United and fuse that talent together in the same way, it can dominate Group G. However, unfortunately Coach Hoddle can only invite Sheringham, Beckham, the Neville brothers, and Scholes from the "Red Devils" and cannot invite Norvitorio, Gigs, or Schmikel. With the return of Shearer, the forwards are strong enough and the defensive midfield is covered by Ince. With Seaman in goal, there is no worry about any drastic drop in level.

However, with the defensive line made up of three players, leaving aside the two playing man-to-man, concern remains about the ability of Adams to respond flexibly in his role as the remaining defender providing cover. For forwards, Romania has Moldovan, who has been the scoring champion two years in a row in the Swiss league, and Ilie, who deepened his mutual understanding with Hagi during the Garatasarai era. Colombia's chance to sneak through rests with the weapons of Valderrama's through passes and Asprilla's explosiveness. In particular, England has flexible technique and will not line up as well against Romania, with its counter attacks. In the past seven matches between the two countries, England has three wins, three losses and two ties, but looking at just the matches since 1980, England has two ties and one loss. In this group, there is nothing that can be said for sure other than that Tunisia will lose out.

TEAM POTENTIAL
	Offense	Defense	Overall	Probability of winning through
ROMANIA	B	C	B	65%
ENGLAND	A	B	A	75%
COLOMBIA	B	C	C	40%
TUNISIA	E	D	E	10%