The Last Word and Straw

Final thoughts on the great débâcle 2010. I'm sure you're sick and tired of reading about the causes of our present condition but I feel that I have earned the right to return to the subject since I have been decrying the weakness of English football for some time (just type in "football" in "SEARCH THIS BLOG").

There is an absurd dimension to the whole palaver in the sense that you don't have to be a mathematical genius to understand that for every team that wins another must perforce lose. If each defeat is going to lead to a bloodbath, it's a pretty poor lookout, don't you think? Surely we can simply acknowledge that we were beaten by a better team and then move on?

But of course that is precisely what we CANNOT do, because to do so would be to recognise that football is not just a game but a multi-billion dollar business which in turn depends for its survival on whipping up "fans" into a frenzy of patriotic hysteria or national blood-letting. It would no doubt be absurd to point to the tabloid press as the source of all our troubles, but it would equally be ridiculous to deny that this is yet another example of how the tabloids act as a cancer in the midst of our society. The tabloids and the "media", by which I mean very specifically the BBC which should really have known better than to praise England's woeful performance against Slovenia to the skies. Did the likes of Alan Shearer and Lee Dixon seriously believe after that performance that the English team would go further in the World Cup? If they did, it is because they themselves were typical products of English club football which rewards strength and commitment at the expense of technical skill and tactical awareness.

Finally, if we are going to lose, and if we are going to lose abjectly, at least we could try to lose graciously. But even that seems to be beyond us nowadays. The England team finds it hard to congratulate or commiserate with an opponent. We are sulky and sullen and no slouches when it comes to thuggish behaviour. The joy seems to have gone out of our game.