Well that was a shambles. All the talk is going to be about the disallowed goal over the line, but that’s to detract from the poor performances all round by the England players. We should’ve been 4 goals down by that stage, and we were lucky that Germany only scored another two goals in the second half.
One statistic that’s worth pointing out: Emile Heskey has scored more goals in World Cups than Wayne Rooney and Frank Lampard put together.
Just. Not. Good. Enough.
“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!”
Brian Blessed voices his support for the England team as only Brian Blessed can, quoting one of the most famous speeches from Shakespeare, with support from other English sporting stars in this promo from the BBC.
I love Brian Blessed.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I am really fucking nervous about the England game today. Call me a pessimist, but I just don’t rate us as a team, both in terms of ability and attitude.
On the former, we’re lacking something tactically, and we don’t have enough world-class players. Rooney is out of form, and our tactics don’t suit the other top-draw players (Gerrard and, it pains me to say, Ashley Cole). The rest of the team is mediocre at best when it comes to international quality: Heskey, Lennon, Milner, Upson, Johnson, James, etc.
The 4-4-2 which Capello is seemingly welded to isn’t working too well, with players out of position and not able to perform as they do at club level. I’m not saying that I have a solution, but trying something different would be a good start.
On the latter, we may not be as bad as France, but it is clear that there is disharmony in the squad, both amongst the players and between the players and Capello. John Terry’s comments on Sunday were unnecessary and ill-advised, and Capello’s insistence on absolute adherence to his rules isn’t helping either.
We look tense and nervous out on the pitch, which is having an effect on the quality of our performances. These players perform in the Premier League week in and week out, yet can’t string more than two passes together in South Africa? There’s a reason for that, and it’s all mental.
I hate to be pessimistic when it comes to football, and I hope that I’m proved wrong, but should we not get through this afternoon, just remember that I told you so.
Jamie Carragher in Carra: My Autobiography.
I think I speak for a lot of England fans when I say that it is a fucking disgrace that Jamie Carragher is back in the England squad for this year’s World Cup. This man deliberately retired from international football after the last World Cup so as to concentrate on his club football, and then “wrote” this in his autobiography.
Fuck Jamie Carragher. He’s not even good enough to play for us anyway: his positioning is dodgy, he’s slow, his attempts to recover are clumsy, and all he can do is hoof the ball 40 yards forwards in an aimless fashion whenever he has the ball at his feet. It’s only the ability and willingness to run of Torres up front that makes him look anywhere near good at passing the ball.
Fuck Jamie Carragher.
The Guardian has spent four months covertly filming demonstrations by the English Defence League, a relatively new far-right Islamophobic organisation that takes to the streets to protest against Muslims in England. This report is worth watching because it’s disturbing that there are so many people in this country who are still resolutely racist. The BNP didn’t perform as well as expected in this year’s election, thankfully, but it seems that many are now moving even further to the right and preferring street protests and violence to the ballot box. They’re deliberately provocative, and horribly, horribly racist. With an ever-increasing fanbase and membership, and with more protests planned this summer (including in towns with larger than average Muslim populations, in attempts to spark retaliation, you have to feel), this won’t be the last we hear of the EDL.
A selected list of shires in England:
Berk-
Buckingham-
Cambridge-
Gloucester-
Hamp-
Hereford-
Hertford-
Huntingdon-
Oxford-
Shrop-
Wilt-
Worcester-
York-
The
Ah yes, it’s that day when we celebrate a Palestinian soldier in the Roman army from the 3rd/4th century AD who refused to renounce his faith when ordered to by his superiors, and who probably didn’t kill a dragon.
The dragon story seems to have been brought back with the Crusaders as they returned from the Holy Lands in the 11th and 12th centuries, no doubt as a bit of jingoism for their campaign against the Muslims of that region. This resulted in the creation of a feast day on the anniversary of his death, celebrating his martyrdom for the Christian faith.
There’s no obvious connection with England, and he probably never visited our island in his lifetime, but every year on April 23rd we celebrate his patronage. His cross decorates the English flag, and is the red vertical/horizontal element of the Union Jack as well.
Happy St. George’s Day, everyone!
I was just watching QI, a British comedy/quiz TV show that I highly recommend to anyone who loves trivia and believes that most commonly held “facts” are actually quite false indeed. Anyway, in this episode, they mentioned that cock-fighting was England’s national sport for over two thousand years, and that every town/village had its own fighting pit.
So much was this “sport” part of the national psyche that it gave us some elements of language which still survive today, such as:
“cockpit”: where the fights actually took place
“show a clean pair of heels”: some fights had weapons attached to the birds’ heels
“game” (as in ‘I’m game for that’): related to game in the sense of birds in general, I assume
“to pit someone against someone else”: again, the name of the ring being used
There are others which I’ve found during my brief searches online, including “crestfallen” (from the visual image of the crest on the bird’s head after the fight), and “cocky/cocksure” in general for the opposite.
The transcript of that episode of QI is online, and there’s a little more information about cock-fighting’s cultural impact on medieval England here.
As the title of the programme says, it’s all quite interesting.
Freddie Flintoff’s Greatest Over
(via kwalker101 on youtube)
The Ashes series starts today, and I’m very, very excited.
The Ashes is a bi-annual cricket contest between England and Australia, that has been going on for over 100 years, and it’s probably the most well-known cricket matches around the world.
In the last series, we got walloped 5-0 down in Oz and were generally abject. But the media coverage here recently has concentrated much more on the last time that the Australians came to England, in 2005.
In that series, which was absolutely epic and of which I watched nearly every ball (it was during the summer holidays whilst I was at uni, and I wasn’t working much), England won 2-1. It was incredible to watch, and the whole nation was transfixed.
During the last match, which we only needed to draw to win the series, rain was greeted with cheers from the crowd. So much so that a book entitled “Is It Cowardly To Pray For Rain?” was released, which collated the Guardian newspaper’s over-by-over live reports.
I can highly recommend them by the way. They’re really funny, and handy if you’re not near a TV. Today’s has already started.
The video itself is of the English bowler Andrew “Freddie” Flintoff having his best five minutes of the entire series. He was all over the batsmen, building huge pressure and taking two massive wickets. Incredible stuff, and re-watching it today has got my adrenaline going for this year’s matches.
Come on you England!!!
Today’s St George’s Day, the patron saint of England. Unfortunately, and to the eternal dismay of Daily Mail readers, we English don’t really celebrate it all that much, and definitely not to the extent that the Irish/wannabe-Irish honour their national patron saint…
There’s a few pubs, usually the traditional kind, that like to get the flags and bunting out, but for the vast majority of us it simply passes by. It’s not that we don’t feel as proud of our country as others do theirs, it’s more a case of there being many other ways in which to show our pride.
As so often before in my writing, football seems to be the obvious candidate, with our fans famed worldwide for their love of the national team. Obviously, we’re also famed for our likelihood of causing trouble and drinking far too much whilst supporting the team, but the pride is there.
Equally, look at events such as the Proms, the Baftas, Wimbledon, anything to do with the Royal Family, and countless others: we’re very good at showing national pride, even if we don’t do it too much on the supposedly designated day of the year.
Admittedly, some of these could be said to be more British in nature than English, but English has pretty much become synonymous with Britain nowadays. This again is something bemoaned by the little Englanders as a lack of national pride in England itself.
For me, that’s no bad thing. I’m fiercely proud to be English, but I’m also proud of being British, and similarly I’m proud to be European too. Being English is obviously what I most identify with, and it’s what I would choose to be classified as if push came to shove, but I’ve no problem in being seen as either British or European, not that the two are mutually exclusive.
What I’m trying to say is that I think campaigns to resurrect English national pride on St George’s Day are pretty unnecessary. It’s very much possible (and probably should even be encouraged) to be proud of being English but not necessarily feeling the need to have a day set aside for celebrating our Englishness.
