England are on their way to Austria

The England team are travelling to Irdning, near Salzburg, for altitude training to help prepare for the conditions they will face in South Africa at the World Cup despite the ash cloud giving them a few problems as to whether they would get there or not, but fortunately the flight restrictions have now been lifted.

Austria is becoming an increasingly popular destination for Europe's top clubs, with Arsenal also using the excellent facilities which were shown off at the 2008 European Championships, held jointly with Switzerland. Another nine international teams, including World Cup participants Japan, Greece and North Korea will travel to Austria to play friendly matches.

The squad is due to play a friendly against Mexico at Wembley on 24 May.

England's squad is due to return to Irdning two days after the Mexico friendly before playing their final pre-World Cup friendly against Japan in nearby Graz on 30 May.

Following that match, the 30-man squad will come back to England and the final 23-man squad will be announced on Tuesday, 1 June before flying out to their Rustenburg World Cup base in South Africa the following day.

The ash cloud disruption comes at the end of a testing week for England's Football Association.

It had to deal with Capello's involvement in a player ratings website for the World Cup - the plans for which have now been postponed.

And on Sunday, Lord Triesman stepped down as chairman of the FA and the England 2018 World Cup bid after a newspaper article said he suggested Spain could drop its 2018 bid if rival bidder Russia helped bribe referees at this summer's World Cup.

It never rains, but it pours, who knows what else will happen before the first match is kicked off, keep reading Charo's blog to find out all the action.


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