Every four years the FIFA World Cup delivers sporting theatre which is as rich in human psychology as it is in football. Of course it's only a game. But there were two comments from the papers following England's quarter final exit from a so-far enthralling competition in Qatar which stood out :
"The World Cup counts so much because it is a window on to who's who and what's what unlike anything else that football offers. We see what players are made of, divested of whatever advantages they have when playing for the biggest and best clubs, shouldering hopes of nations and conscious such opportunities come round only a few times in a career."
and
"Football is the one place where reality and their highfalutin sense of themselves meet."
Interestingly, the journos were showing their disappointment with the teams of Brazil and Argentina respectively, the former knocked out by an un-fancied Croatian side containing a number of middle- aged men and the latter squeaking a bad-tempered victory on penalties against an equally unfancied Dutch side which refused to be rolled over, despite being 2-0 down for most of the match.
As a muddled Sassenach (albeit with Irish Catholic and French Huguenot ancestry) it grieves me to ask, but could not those observations be fairly applied to the football set up of England? Certainly the fans who watched open mouthed as Harry Kane hoofed the match saving penalty over the cross bar would seem to deserve an explanation.
Whatever his deficiencies in either selection or tactics, there is no doubting that England manager Gareth Southgate has a genius for PR. He managed the quite extraordinary feat of making the England football team vaguely likeable. This is a group with both talent and a social conscience. We have had knee-taking, armband wearing, group hugging and a general vibe of wholesomeness. When was the last time an England sports team changed the course of government social policy? One of its soccer stars, Marcus Rashford, managed to do just that when agitating for free school meals in both term time and holiday for the children of "vulnerable" families. Such is the shallowness of our politics, the administration of Boris Johnson caved in promptly. Yet no-one (least of all Rashford) seemed to consider that the proposal effectively relieved parents of the basic duty of feeding their children.
But no matter. Emboldened by all the hypocritical hoo-ha about Qatar's human rights record, Team England arrived in the desert in full warrior-for-social-justice mode. There was some confected nonsense about the wearing of Gay Pride armbands which was swiftly snuffed out once FIFA showed a metaphorical yellow card. The arc of England's football followed a similar trajectory soon afterwards.
For the side's performance at these events seems to be as predictable as the seasons. First, there are the qualifying matches against the likes of Tibet, Andorra and Vatican City where Team England still contrive to get a scare from part-time crews mostly comprised of students, car mechanics, elderly fishermen and hairdressers. There then follows a group stage at the main event in which it flattens a country of which few of its supporters have ever heard, and then ekes out a series of draw-bores to get into the knock-outs. The rest writes itself.
From the Amazonian basin to the Himalayan plateau, there cannot be a person on the planet who is unaware of Team England's frailty in front of a barn door, minimally defended by a man in fluorescent jim-jams waving his arms about. More serious is their consistent inability to seal the deal against sides as talented, rich, well-trained and pampered as themselves. Were France the better team on the night? England's "rising star" Jude Bellingham thought not, which only goes to show the depths of a nation's delusions. England spent much of the match falling over, shouting at the referee and passing back to the goal-keeper - all sure signs of nerves beginning to fray. Their opponents played as if they meant to win it, whereas England played as if they thought they would win it next time.
It's no good blaming the manager, or the match officials or VAR or whatever. The media are as masterful in the stoking of fantasy as are the players. Over on ITV, some blow-hard preposterously declared that had England won, they would never have had an easier route to the final, as only Morocco would have stood in the way. What, the Morocco which played as a team, defended like tigers and put out the much vaunted sides of Spain, Portugal and Belgium? That Morocco?
In the end, is not courage defined by the exercise of key skills under pressure? Managers like Southgate are up against it because ultimately they are dealing with a bunch of immature multi-millionaires who don't really need to wear the national shirt, no matter how "gutted" they feel after blowing yet another chance for the long-suffering fans. Far more seriously, they are the product of an education system which routinely promotes self-esteem rather than self-respect, a construct to which impressionable young males seem particularly susceptible. In that sense, Team England really do represent a culture which in so many ways finds it easy to fold in the hope things will be less difficult next time.
So if you don't want to put yourself endlessly through the mangle as an England fan, but really want to see football played with guts as well as skill, then watch the women's game. Or better still, Morocco.
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