England striker Michael Owen knew his injury was serious the moment he fell to the turf against Sweden.
"I haven't seen the incident again on television, but I knew straightaway that I was in trouble," he wrote in his column in The Times of London newspaper Thursday. "There is no awful pain, but you feel the crunch."
Owen tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee in the second minute of England's 2-2 tie Tuesday night.
"The diagnosis was fairly simple, given that my foot wasn't pointing in the right direction," Owen wrote. "My mum, wife and sister were obviously upset seeing me lie there with my knee swelling up like a balloon, but I do have the ability to be quite philosophical about these things. I have been called cold in the past and, at times like this, it is a real strength."
Owen said he felt guilt rather than self-pity when he lay getting treated because he wouldn't play soccer again this year.
"I was sending text messages apologizing to all sorts of people for letting them down," he said.
• It was Man vs. Elephant on a soccer field in Thailand yesterday, as World Cup fever took on a decidedly local flair. Eleven elephants, each one's back painted with different national flags and carrying a rider, faced off against 11 human players for an afternoon designed to convince fans that soccer is about fun and not gambling. Sports gambling is illegal in Thailand but widespread nonetheless. The elephant representing England had the name "Beckham" scrawled down its hind leg -- a tribute to English captain David Beckham.
• Stressed-out World Cup fans are contributing to a 20 percent rise in cases of facial paralysis in Beijing, state media reported yesterday. Doctors quoted by the agency said they believed the increase was due to nervous tension and exhaustion from watching World Cup games, which start at 10 p.m. local time and continue into the early hours of the morning. The condition, also known as prosopoplegia or Bell's palsy, is caused by nerve trauma and is usually temporary. Most sufferers recover in a matter of weeks or months.
• With two wins in its last two games, Ghana became the second team to lose its opening match and advance to the second round of the World Cup since the field for the competition was expanded to 32 teams before the 1998 tournament. In 1998 and 2002, 23 teams lost their opening games, and of them 22 failed to advance. In 2002, Turkey lost its opening match to Brazil, tied Costa Rica, then beat China and managed to advance on goal difference over the Ticos. Once into the knockout rounds, Turkey excelled, losing to eventual-champion Brazil again in the semifinals before beating South Korea in the third-place game. Ghana lost its first World Cup match to Italy, 2-0, but upset the Czech Republic, 2-0, and then beat the United States, 2-1, yesterday.
• Mexico will keep its World Cup base in Goettingen, if it gets past Argentina in Saturday's second-round game in Leipzig. At a news conference last night, national team coordinator Guillermo Cantu praised the city's hospitality and said that Goettingen was "half German and half Mexican." Mexico also used Goettingen, a university town in Lower Saxony, as its base during last year's Confederations Cup. The city has embraced the team, with thousands of fans turning out for Mexico's rare open training sessions.
