I think it's been a top quality tournament all the way through, as usually the group games are the most boring to watch but not this one.

Nearly every match has been excellent to watch with goals and drama galore.

Many people would have predicted the Portuguese and Netherlands to go
through, but as is football, this never ceases to amaze me, with shock scores all the time. Football is so unpredictable and hard to call, and this is what makes it the best game in the world!!!

How can you pick a winner out of the semi-finals now?

Form goes out the window, and it's a one-off match to get to the final, but I'm favouring a Germany versus Spain final.

What will be interesting now is to see what happens with the Cristiano Ronald situation, and whether he moves or not.

Something has got to give, but we'll see now who has the power, and whether it's the player or the club (Manchester Utd).

With our next match against Kansas City this week at home it was a great chance for us to get another three points on the board against a team that was struggling to find form recently.

We had managed to beat them earlier in the season 2-0, but knew that this game would be totally different.

They set out their formation to try and stifle us in the middle of the park and chances were few and far between in the first half, with
Kansas probably having the best one when Scott Sealy planted a header wide from eight yards.

We made a few slight adjustments in the second half and a couple of substitutions, and they nearly paid off as we created a couple of great chances but could just not get the goal that we wanted.

The game ended in a 0-0 draw and we were disappointed not only with our performance, but a couple of the aspects of our play, but having said that to play not great and still take something out of the game is a sign of a good team – we're certainly getting there.

I feel as a team we are beginning to gel a lot more and understand each other. Now comes the tough task, a visit to Steve Nicol's New England next week at the Gillette Stadium (the home of the American Football team the New England Patriots).

As a team we have never beaten, we'll be going there to put on a good performance and try to kick start our away form.

I think we have another two British lads coming over here next week to train with us and have a look at the set up, which tells me that lots more people are considering coming across the water to play football.

Having made that decision, I know it's a big step and one that you and your family need to make sure is the right one, but sometimes you get one opportunity in life, and I thought this was mine, and it was the right decision.

Life is all about decisions, and football is no different.

In Toronto as the weather reaches 30 degrees everyday, there is so much going on and so many things to do that there are not enough hours in the day. On sunday I took the family to Ontario park, a kids adventure play area, and they loved it for a couple of hours, and then we went into town to eat at the CN Tower, which is the tallest building in the world.

These are things that I never got to do as a kid, so I'm making up for it now.

My parents did everything for me to get where I am today, and I owe everything to them. Like them, everything I do is for my kids too.

We even went training down the beach on Tuesday, as a change of scenery, now you don't get to do that in England.

Mind you we did have a tough session trying to run on sand, with relays and head tennis before some relaxing (a great session to be involved in).

It's totally different being a footballer over here, as you tend not to get noticed as much, as the other sports of ice hockey and baseball are bigger pulls, but this is very nice as you can go and eat, watch a movie or walk down the street without anyone saying a word.

I keep hearing that the football here is improving all the time and
enticing better players – I think the standard is improving, but it will take a while to get where they want to get, but whether it will ever be as big as football in Europe is another question.

The whole system of being owned by the league and not by your team, is still hard to get your head around, and the chance you could get traded at any time, and not even have a say in it, is hard to understand, but that's how the system has been since the league started nearly 12 years ago.

We now face a tough schedule of eight games in 22 days, which will have a big say in the league.