Sunday, March 25, 2007

Israel Holds the Haircuts

Wonderful news for for all true fans of English football. Yesterday's fantastically dismal performance by the assembled haircuts of the worst football team in the world against Israel can only hasten the day when one of two things must happen. Either the entire team, management and FA hierarchy is sacked and the England team starts again or we abandon international competition, the English game having become entirely unfit to produce a national team. The first would be more satisfying, but the second more honest. The crisis is, however, some way off as the football community is still incapable of grasping the obvious - that our players, though good enough when playing for their clubs, are ridiculously over-rated at the international level and utterly devoid of passion, teamwork, imagination and elementary competences when playing for their country. Steve McLaren will, of course, be sacked soon enough. But, without a revolutionary bloodletting at the highest levels, nothing can possibly change as the national team is now little more than an annoying obligation for the clubs and the players, the latter inhabiting the pitch like whining, fidgeting schoolboys listening to a dull sermon. The fans should be besieging the Football Association, which, since you ask, is located at 25, Soho Square, London, W1D 4FA. The square, with its strange, half-timbered hut and badly weathered statue of Charles II, would make an excellent assembly point and fine dining is readily available nearby.

5 comments:

  1. Canada was thinking of putting forth a team for the next Internationals but the Football Association said Canada can't have a team until England gets one!

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  2. They certainly lived up to their billing as The Worst Team in the World yesterday. They are all dreadful, of course, but at the moment I find it most therapeutic to take the traditional English approach and focus my fury and frustration on a single scapegoat.

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  3. Thank God someone has written what I think. Why do we indulge in this belief that England is great at football when so obviously it isn't? Why can't we celebrate what this country is good at, e.g. the arts?
    Is it because of out-dated class-based notions that football is authentically working class whereas the arts are somehow considered elitist?

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  4. Football, when seen at its best, is unquestionably a contemporary art, whereas many examples of contemporary art are, I think, a load of balls.

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