Here We Go, Here We Go, Here We Go!

So, after all the hype and expectation, England are out of the World Cup at the hands of Germany. No change there then.

All through the tournament England played like they were asleep and Germany played like they wanted to win. On reflection, I'm not surprised. What is surprising is why expectation is so high when it’s a lifetime since England were even thought likely to win. Also, why is it that players who perform perfectly well for their club consistently disappoint for their country? Pressure? Not likely, these guys are under a lot of pressure on a weekly basis in the Premier League. Another reason given is tiredness. I wonder how that sounds to fans who on average work a 12-hour day for a tiny fraction of what footballers get. Premier League footballers are fed the best nutrition money can buy and are (or should be) at the peak of physical fitness. They play no more matches a season than any other European team, so no excuse there either.

Why does the team fail to reproduce the football we see week in week out during the season? The reaction of some of the players to their poor performance may give a clue. Rob Green’s lack of remorse at his mistake, Gerrard’s calm acceptance of the lack of attacking play and Rooney’s petulance after the Algerian game is significant. The will just wasn’t there.

Nowadays footballers are nurtured and encouraged (some would say indulged) all their lives and their sense of entitlement is enormous. They have no concept of the reality of the lives of the majority of their fans and cannot conceive of real disappointment. They get paid whether they perform well or not (and even if the club goes bust) and the concept of personal or national pride is probably far too abstract for them to understand. So, they shrug their shoulders and go on holiday to the derision of the press and the whole round of inquests into the state of the game in England begins yet again.

The TV coverage hasn’t helped football’s cause. It’ll be interesting to see how many TV viewers in England continue to watch the tournament now that England are out. ITV will have to try to wedge even more ads into their coverage which has been poor to say the least. The standard of commentary, the pundits chosen to comment during the few moments that ads aren’t being shown and the general professionalism has been bad. I get the feeling Adrian Chiles will be regretting his decision to leave the BBC before too long. The breakdown of HD during the England v Slovenia match just at the time when England scored was appalling. I have to admit the thought crossed my mind whether someone had bet on that happening.
The last time the game was honest?

It has struck me watching the poor standard of refereeing during the tournament that gambling has had a huge impact on football for quite a while. I think it’s significant that a BBC documentary into this aspect of English football was abandoned some years ago. This documentary led into another on the finances of the game which resulted in Alex Ferguson refusing to speak to the BBC directly (a practice which he continues to this day). I’m sure there is some enterprising journalist out there with the resources and contacts to look into this with I would imagine some striking results, but I do think that the state of English football has needed close examination for some time. When you think how much money is poured into the game nowadays, I’d be surprised to find there’s nothing untoward going on. As my old dad used to say, where there’s cash there’s crooks. But how does this affect the national team? Without any values the game will always be subject to cheating and where you can cheat in a game, there’s not much honour in winning. So a young football player who’s seen backhanders, bungs, gambling syndicates etc is not going to be burning with passion to play for his country. You might say that this must happen everywhere, and so it might but it’s England we’re talking about here. The game invented here and played throughout the centuries in one form or another has been sold off to the best bidder.

Where do we go from here? There may be people inside football who are trying to improve things but you need to put things into context. With other young men facing injury and death in Afghanistan for no good reason (and doing so for a pittance) it might just dawn on the punters that watching a bunch of millionaires stroking a ball round a field is not really worth the money or the effort. We’ll see.