"Germany played dazzling football in bursts and adjusted their pace and pattern of play to suit the circumstances. They worked out how to win the game and reach a quarter-final. Two counter-attacking goals in four minutes showed up England’s defensive naivety and wooden pursuit of an equaliser after the goal-that-never-was: the best indictment yet of Fifa’s neanderthal prejudice against goal-line technology. In the Wimbledon fortnight a simple machine can say whether a tennis ball has crossed a white line. Here in football’s biggest competition Fifa tells men their lives will be defined by what happens on the World Cup stage and then denies them the equipment that would make those definitions fair. For the outcomes of World Cup games to be shaped by this prejudice brings the sport into disrepute, if that isn’t an oxymoron. But this legitimate gripe will not conceal England’s ineptitude in allowing Germany to counterattack their way to a crushing victory and so extend the hurt inflicted in 1970 and 1990."
