Don’t write England’s World Cup chances off, says Roy Hodgson

England manager Roy Hodgson says his side’s chances cannot be written off at this summer's World Cup in Brazil.

England open their campaign against Italy on 14 June before two more Group D games against Uruguay and Costa Rica.

“I definitely don’t think that we are favourites to win the tournament but I also refuse to believe that we need to be written off,” said Hodgson.

When England go into a World Cup usually there’s been a wave of optimism that this time, despite all the previous failures, this time England will win and usually what happens is we crash out on penalties and never look like winning it.

I was hoping maybe this time round we might try a different approach and state the obvious that we can’t win it, but for some reason Hodgson has decided that we shouldn’t be written off, even though there is a real chance and I mean a real chance, that we might not get out of the group.

This would have been the perfect time to say it’s not going to our year this year and then we can all be pleasantly surprised if England do well, rather than the usual.

I’d like to be more positive about our chances but like I said previous evidence suggests my pessimism is well placed.