FIFA World Cup: Have England been Perennially unfortunate in the competition's history?
England's football team is one which undergoes intense scrutiny from its own media as well as fans before any major international tournament. Expectations have always been at a premium, though time and again, the team failed to justify them.
England's young squad put in a valiant display at this year's world cup and made it to the semi-finals before getting knocked out by an excellent Croatian performance. Even though they couldn't win it, they still earned plaudits from fans and media alike for their excellent performances.
But here we look back at some previous World Cup performances where more often than not, misfortune played a major part in deciding the fate of England:
#5 World Cup 2010
England barely scraped through to the knockout rounds from an easy group, including USA, Algeria and Slovenia, in second position to set up a last-16 tie with Germany.
However, this image went on to haunt the English team in the aftermath of this tournament. Trailing 2-1, Lampard's fierce shot struck the crossbar, went in and bounced back as Neuer collected the ball pretending as if nothing happened. Somehow even the officials failed to spot the incident and the goal was denied.
Capitalizing on this let-off, the Germans went on to score 2 more goals as England were ruthlessly knocked out 4-1. However, the one good that came out of it was the introduction of Goal-line technology which has since prevented such incidents from taking place.