Today’s double header (at least the one that interests me) involves the England-Russia tilt followed by Canada-Costa Rica, which I will be attending at BMO Field.Speaking of the Canada match, it appears as though our international squad is none-too-fond of BMO Field’s FieldTurf.

Stalteri, who acknowledging he is not an expert on the matter, said he thought the artificial surface hasn’t helped Toronto FC, which has been plagued by injuries this season in the MLS. 

Hopefully, the squad gets past their aversion to synthetic turf and plays a strong match. It’s going to be cold down by the water tonight, and I’ll want to feel as though I didn’t freeze for nothing. To be fair to the field, however, Stalteri hasn’t yet played on the FieldTurf surface and is presuming it to be as bad as the UCC turf on which the Canada squad has been practicing this week.

While England is full of holes in their (preferred) starting XI, Stevie G looks as though he’ll remain fit enough to start again today against the Russians. Should be an interesting match as Guus Hiddink is currently coaching Russia and was (one of many, I’m sure) offered the job as England manager prior to McClaren. This will be an important game in terms of deciding Euro 2008 qualifying, so hopefully they get the full 3 points.

Oh, and yet another reason to dislike Roman Ambramovich (other than his owning Chelsea) - he has apparently offered each player in the Russian squad a £40,000 bonus if they manage to win. Ugh.

And lastly, from the WTF department, a man has been remanded to custody and is awaiting sentencing after pleading guilty to punching Sir Alex Ferguson in the, um, boys, yesterday at a London train station. Somewhere, there’s a joke to be made in this story, but I’ll leave that up to you.