World Cup

Some poor bugger did a great job decorating his car with a very professional looking England paint-job, only for the England team to replay his faith with abject failure.

So now he's backing Ghana.

Me to as it happens. Well, Ghana and Germany.

Today the Daily Mail and Sun both reveal that Wayne Rooney booked a holiday to Barbados two days before England were knocked out of the World Cup by Germany.

I'm prepared to give Rooney the benefit of the doubt (after all he can afford the cancellation fee) but the timing of this holiday doesn't demonstrate much ambition or belief on his part, and many fans will begrudge him the holiday at his £5M Barbados mansion that is beyond most of our wildest dreams.

I am reminded of the quote from BBC Radio 5 Live's Alan Green that I published a couple of days ago:

"I hope the players are embarrassed and slink away in misery. And in economy class. But I fear they'll just jet off to Barbados, and it will all be a vague memory to them in a few weeks - unless the English public remind them. They should be booed onto the pitch at the friendly against Hungary in August."

Rooney's lack of tact is nothing compared to what the Sun and Mail are reporting that Ashley Cole has done. For this Ashley Cole should never again don an England shirt.

Ashley Cole launched a foul-mouthed rant about England and its 'people' days before flying out to the World Cup to play football for his country.

The message - which read 'I hate England and the f***ing people - was sent to friends from the Chelsea defender's Blackberry shortly before he boarded a flight to England's pre-World Cup training camp in Austria.

The 29-year-old posted it as his status message - alongside a picture of him sunbathing topless - allowing all those designated as his friends to see it.

Now I accept that the Sun and Mail aren't always the most reputable of journals, but if this is true then - as a Chelsea supporter - I don't even want this maggot of a man in a Chelsea shirt bearing one lion, let alone an England shirt bearing three.

Writing in the Guardian, Gary Younge makes a similar point to the one I made yesterday:

For, when England's national team ceases to exist as a viable entity – as it did at the weekend – the nation and, to some extent, its national identity goes with it. Most of the flags that have been brandished these last few weeks will now disappear. When the final whistle blew in Bloemfontein, the ref called time on a 90-minute nation. The flag of St George that was flying over Downing Street on Sunday was replaced by a union flag on Monday morning.

This is what I wrote:

It's not football that our woeful team have deprived us of, many of us will continue to watch and enjoy the World Cup out of a love of football; nor have they deprived very many of us of the prospect of being world champions, for very few of us ever entertained that prospect. No, what our England team have denied us is the opportunity to revel in a national celebration (Downing Street has already replaced the Cross of St George with the Union flag, and as I type England flags across the length and breadth of England are being packed away until next time). Rugby Union and Cricket have been known to unite the nation in patriotic outbursts of Englishry, but it is the unrivalled popularity of football that makes it so important for the movement towards a popular English nationalism. Our team's abject failure is a political set-back for England.

Sadly, ridiculously, pathetically even, I do feel that our team's exit from the World Cup has deprived us - we English - of something more than football. It has deprived us of national camaraderie and the chance to 'wave your flag' without prejudice. It's really only during the World Cup or St George's Day that it's acceptable to fly the Cross of St George, do so at any other time and so-called progressives will judge you to be a racist or, worse, a chav.

So the flags will be squirreled away into the cupboard under the stairs and the Guardian's writers will return to writing articles about the need to reclaim the flag of England from the far-right and, in equal measure, to writing judgemental articles about the motives or class of those that do fly the flag outside the socially accepted dates for doing so. Back to square one. A decent England performance might have moved the nation beyond this apparently intractable cultural stalemate, but alas it was not to be and CEP calls to keep the flags flying will fall on deaf ears or will be ignored by a political class who really would much prefer that England flags were in the cupboard under the stairs.

When I heard that the FA had amended Fabio Capello's contract to commit him to England until Euro 2012, I had a premonition that I would be sat here now typing the word 'why?'

The England team's World Cup performances under Capello has brought shame to the nation. I can't soft-soap it, they are a national embarrassment and an international laughing stock. There are no positives that we can take from South Africa 2010. We played poorly in every game, and yet persisted with the same boring and unpopular system; not one of our supposedly world-class players shone and set the World Cup alight; and the team failed in what should be their primary purpose, to entertain the watching public and make us proud.

When Capello substituted Defoe for Emile Heskey , you could almost feel the whole of England let out a collective national groan. What the fucketty-fuck was Capello doing; was the Italian a fifth columnist? Heskey cannot even get a game for Aston Villa and in my opinion there's no way that he should even be in the England squad, let alone selected ahead of Villa's far more youthful and exciting Gabriel Agbonlahor and Ashley Young. And why, when Heskey has scored 7 goals in 62 England games and Peter Crouch has scored 21 goals in 40 games, was he who could not score in a whore-house given the nod ahead of England's lanky goal-scoring machine? It seemed obvious to me that Wayne Rooney was out of sorts, and by half-time I was screaming for him to be taken off and replaced by Crouch (Defoe and Crouch being a more proven striking partnership). I appreciate that it's a big call for a manager to bring off a player of Rooney's calibre and iconic status, even if he is under performing (in which case why not put Crouch on in place of Defoe and drop Rooney back into the hole alongside Gerrard, with Barry, Lampard and Milner across the middle?), but that is the type of big decision that Capello is paid £5M a year to take, and didn't.

Our other substitutes were equally uninspiring. Joe Cole is an inventive if erratic little player but he's coming back from injury and hasn't been playing well for Chelsea. He should not have traveled to South Africa. Sean Wright-Phillips was brought on at 87 minutes, presumably to inject the pace that England lacked after the substituting of Defoe and the exclusion of Walcott, Young and Agbonlahor, but it was too late to make any difference. At the end of the day - to use the time-honoured footballing idiom - all the Wright-Phillips, Walcotts, Agbonlahors, Youngs and Crouches under the sun probably would not have helped England. We lost the game in the centre of midfield, which was overstretched by the inability of a striking partnership that could not hold the ball (throughout the campaign the ball just seemed to bounce off Rooney), and through the inept pairing of Terry with Upson in the centre of defence. To give them their dues both Upson and Terry gave 100% - it was Upson who rose like a salmon to head the goal that temporarily galvanised the England team - but it is a pairing that did not work and was not given any protection by a disjointed England midfield, and that is a failure of management.

I didn't expect us to win the World Cup, I didn't even expect us to get to the semi-finals. However, I did expect us to play with the passion that every England fan expects from their team in order that we could give ourselves the best possible chance of progressing as far as possible in the competition. Some of the missing passion was evident in the last two games but it was a passion rendered worthless by incoherent tactics and, seemingly, a complete absence of footballing intelligence.

When we failed to top the weakest group, with a performance against Algeria that was the most dismal competitive match that I have ever watched an England team play, we ensured that our route to the semi-final would be as difficult as possible: Germany and Argentina instead of Ghana and Uruguay. Various players and ex-players popped up on our TV screens to say that [at the end of the day] "in order to win the World Cup you have to beat the World's best teams", so it really didn't matter that we had come second. These players and pundits clearly do not understand what the World Cup means to the watching public. We want England to progress as far as possible, we don't want to go out in the last sixteen on the basis that we have to go out sooner or later so it may as well be sooner. We want to participate in the greatest sporting festival on the planet for as long as possible for the pure entertainment of being a part of it, to give our team the chance to lift us and to revel in the joy of flying our politically incorrect flag and celebrating our Englishness. Because for the English each England matchday during the World Cup is an English national day (we alone amongst the competing nations have no public holiday on our national day), an opportunity for a collective, national, celebration of Englishness. It is this nationalistic aspect to England's participation in the World Cup, rather than a hatred of football, that leads Julie Birchill to pray for our elimination and Bruce Anderson to muse upon the end of the Union.

It's not football that our woeful team have deprived us of, many of us will continue to watch and enjoy the World Cup out of a love of football; nor have they deprived very many of us of the prospect of being world champions, for very few of us ever entertained that prospect. No, what our England team have denied us is the opportunity to revel in a national celebration (Downing Street has already replaced the Cross of St George with the Union flag, and as I type England flags across the length and breadth of England are being packed away until next time). Rugby Union and Cricket have been known to unite the nation in patriotic outbursts of Englishry, but it is the unrivalled popularity of football that makes it so important for the movement towards a popular English nationalism. Our team's abject failure is a political set-back for England.

It's impossible for me to articulate the anger I felt when I heard Fabio Capello offer the opinion that "we played well" but I'm sure that millions like me will have felt their blood boil. If he truely believes that we played well, then Capello must be the only man on the planet who does. He has to go because England deserves better, and longer, at the World Cup.

If he doesn't go then, as BBC Radio 5 Live's Alan Green suggests, England should be booed onto the pitch the next time they play at Wembley:

"I hope the players are embarrassed and slink away in misery. And in economy class. But I fear they'll just jet off to Barbados, and it will all be a vague memory to them in a few weeks - unless the English public remind them. They should be booed onto the pitch at the friendly against Hungary in August."

Recommended Further Reading: Alfie, two WAGS and Fabio..... (Waking Hereward)

The Conservatives have published a picture of David Cameron watching the England v Slovenia game in an oak panelled drawing room, without a beer, wearing a button-down shirt. Just like millions of other England fans then?

I'm reliably informed that he and his World Cup PR SpAd sang a rousing chorus of Rule Britannia after the match before heading down Soho to have "Born English, Die English" tattooed across their backs.

The photo is not at all posed or contrived, as I think you'll agree.

UPDATE

ConHome are running a caption competition on the aforementioned photo.

UPDATE II

The Times tells us this about Cameron's love of football.

The Bullingdon Berk claims that he is a Villa fan because “the first game I ever went to was an Aston Villa game and so I am an Aston Villa fan”. Man of the people Dave forgot to mention that he was taken along by his uncle, Sir William Dugdale, who just happened to be the Villa chairman at the time.

2006

A two-year-old became an unwitting victim of the World Cup hooligan crackdown after he was ordered to take off his England football top whilst having lunch in a high chair - in case he sparked trouble.

Charlie Elliot was sitting happily at Lloyds No1 in Leicester waiting for his food to be served when his parents were told they would have to leave the pub and would be barred if they didn't take the shirt off.

After an argument the pub manager agreed he could keep it on, but only if his parents turned it inside out...

A spokesman for Lloyds No1 owners, Wetherspoons, said: "We have had a policy of no football colours for a couple of years and it has contributed to order in the pub.

"It prevents trouble and it stops children or their parents being victims of verbal abuse. The policy is applied in all cases."

2010

JD Wetherspoon plans to explicitly market its pubs as the place in which to watch the World Cup.

The company is set to screen most games — and certainly the England ones — at the majority of its sites, said spokesman Eddie Gershon.

It’s in contrast to the 2006 World Cup, when managers were given the choice about whether to screen games — and the sound was turned down. “This will be our biggest attack on the World Cup,” said Gershon.

“It’s something the company is taking very seriously. It will be the first time during a World Cup that our pubs will all have TVs in situ.”

Allez les Blues!

Never - at least not since the Germans invaded - has the World rallied to the cause of France. Me? I was desperate for France to win, a first for me I must admit.

You may think this is just bitter spleen-venting of an England supporter. And in a sense you would be correct; I am an England supporter and I am bitterly venting my sleen. But it is more than that, this is the bitter spleen-venting of someone who loves the beautiful game and for whom the World Cup has been ruined by diving cheats.

Portugal have been an utter disgrace at this World Cup. Their unsporting behaviour has detracted from the great football that we know they can play. Their game against Holland was one of the most unsporting games ever, it was sickening to watch with cynical histrionics on boths sides. Against England Portugal were a little better but still the game was marred by their cheating and unsporting behaviour. I make no attempt to defend Wayne Rooney's actions other than to say that reacting violently to provocation is, in my mind, better than deliberately cheating to to get your opponents sent off and win a game of football. Stupid impetuousness and hot-headedness I can excuse but the persistent calculated tactics of cheating I cannot.

I hope Ronaldo does the honourable thing and does not return to England. It's a sad thing to say about such a talented player but the less of his sort in the Premiership the better for our game. FIFA must act now to stamp out play-acting. All players seen diving ought to be booked after-the-fact - retrospectively after the game - if they are not disiplined during the match.

For me the highlight of this World Cup were the heroics of Australia and Ghana. After England Ghana were my second team and I was thrilled to watch them out-Brazil Brazil, even if they did blot their copybook slightly with a dive in the dying minutes of that game. Australia, showing a tenacity that the English can only dream of, snatched victory from the jaws of defeat against Japan and then went on to be cruelly denied a place in the quarter finals by a disgraceful Grosso dive.

And it is because of that Grosso dive that I will be supporting France against Italy in the final - it's a shame that the Germans didn't knock the cheats out but I really hope that France do.

Back in 2002, before the last World Cup, I was living up in Scotland, working for a large Government research institute. The collaborative international nature of science ensured that there was a healthy mix of nationalities represented - Scots (probably 70%), English (perhaps 10%), along with a mixture of other scientists from around the world, Irish, Spanish, Argentinian, French, German, you get the picture...

With such a smorgasboard of nationalities and footballing pride and prejudices there was obviously some friendly rivalry and canteen banter to be had. One sunny Scottish day I arrived at work and upon turning on my computer I noticed that a screensaver and desktop wallpaper, coutesy of a Tennents' website, had been installed on my computer.

Not wanting to be a bad sport and spoil the joke for my Scottish colleagues I left the foreign bunting up, but, in a covert evening operation with my English colleagues, we made the point of decorating the corridor in some foreign flags of our own - the Cross of St George. And that was that. Lines were drawn in the sand. We all knew where we stood, especially as a large proportion of my Scottish colleagues were resplendent in Argentina strips.

The petty chippiness 'friendly rivalry' from individuals I could take. What bothered me was the Tennents' advertising campaign that was now live on the internet, and on roadside billbords, imploring Scots to support England's opponents. Would Tennents run a similar campaign imploring Scots to support anyone other than Turkey, or Germany, or Nigeria? I didn't think so, and that bothered me. The website in question was www.notattheworldcup.com and was intended to carry the full range of World Cup flags, each with a witty anecdotal Scottish slogan. But in their wisdom Tennents chose to launch it, and the billboard campaign, with just the flags of England's group-stage opponents (Nigeria, Sweden and Argentina) which gave the impression that it was a distinctly anti-English site. And as far as I was concerned it was.

At the time the Scottish press was in an introspective mood, full of articles about playground beatings that were being dished out to English children, and beating itself up about the anti-English vein that ran so visibly through Scottish life. This was post-devolution Scotland, a proud nation with a new sense of purpose and ambition, looking to the future not to the past. Except that it wasn't.

I decided to get pro-active and wrote to Tennents and the Leith Agency (the creative sparks) to complain about the adverts. The ironically named Robert Bruce of Tennents marketing wrote back and accused me of having 'no sense of humour' and further informed me that he hoped that England got beaten and knocked out at the earliest possible juncture. The director of the Leith Agency, Phil Adams, wrote back to inform me that he was an Englishman living in Scotland and he saw the adverts as nothing more than harmless fun. Neither man would concede that their corporate anti-English advertsing could be in anyway related to the beatings taking place on the streets and schoolfields of Scotland. I deliberately asked each man whether they would ever countenance running a simillar campaign against, say, Turkey; whether they thought such a campaign might make life difficult for the immigrant Turkish population in Scotland, and; why Bass Breweries/Interbrew (owners of Tennents) were only running the campaign north of the border, meaning that most of their English customers were oblivious to their methods. I pressed my case by arguing that their campaign maybe be reflective of Scottish opinion rather than causative but that it was, nevertheless, overly provocative given the prevailing wind of anti-Englishness at that time.

Neither man would concede that they might be held responsible for inflaming or reinforcing anti-English prejudice amongst the Tennents swilling yobbery of Scotland. Robert Bruce became increasingly rude and belligerent, picking out the odd spelling or syntax error in my emails, and refusing to be drawn on any of the points that I raised. Phil Adams addressed my points and informed me that altough the English were a minority group they were considered fair game given the sporting rivalry of the two countries, and that the campaign was only running in Scotland because Tennents was only ever marketed in Scotland

Annoyed, more than anything by the intemperance and rudeness of Robert Bruce, I decided to email Scotland on Sunday journalist Antonia Swinson with transcripts of our correspondence. This was the result.

What a result. To be fair Antonia had already been on the case but the Bruce emails enraged her and my case gave her the 'workplace bullying' ammunition that she needed. Of course, I didn't actually feel bullied or intimidated by the actions of my sniggering Scottish colleagues, and I didn't believe the adverts to be 'racist', but the ends justified the means and it was extremely gratifying to see the arrogant Bruce taken down a peg or two.

When the World Cup actually began I was amused, but unperturbed, to find my office furniture adorned, and my office walls plastered, with the flags of Nigeria, Sweden and Argentina.

The institute had a large lecture theatre with a giant screen and it was there that the multicultural workplace watched the matches. All matches were screened but it was only the England matches that drew a large crowd; mostly Scots, with whom I worked, socialised and played footy, all baying for the downfall of my team and the humiliation of England. It was a slightly hostile environment, even in a Government workplace full of extremely well-educated professional individuals, but after the match we got on with our jobs and resumed our friendships. Just as things should be.

Mercifully I was down in England attending a wedding on the day that England played Brazil, so my Scottish pals didn't get to fully enjoy the schadenfreude to which they felt entitled.

After re-reading this post I decided that there was something further that I wanted to add. As I said I don't think that the Tennent's campaign is 'racist' and, as I pointed out in a previous post, neither do I think that the anti-Englishness in Scotland is a form of racism.

Anti-Englishness may well have the same affects as racism - after all it's a form of hatred that often results in abuse, exclusion and violence - but I do not believe that it is a hatred defined by 'race'. It's a hatred defined by other factors (jealousy, sporting tribalism, nationalism and politics) but even the most vociferous Scottish supremacist would be hard pushed to pick out an ethnic Englishman from a line-up of ethnic Scots.

Racism to me is something different, something more sinister. To me racism is the belief that you are superior to another because of your race - your genetics. I don't think that Scots hold that view about the English and, likewise, I don't think the English hold that view about the Scots. The use of the word 'racism' to describe the nationalist squabbles between the English and Scottish devalues a powerful word that should be reserved for more appropriate occasions. I myself have been accused of being 'racist' towards the Scots because of what I write on this blog. It's a laughable suggestion, not least because I have Scottish heritage myself and count many Scots as close friends.

This man may be anti-English. He may be an insecure moron. He may simply be a retard. Or he may, in the words of Andy Murray, be just 'a typical Scot'.

However, I would hesitate in describing him a racist. Proudly displaying the flags of England's opponents is not racist, it's just following the mindset of prominent Scottish public figures such as Andy Murray and Jack McConnell.

Let's get this straight. Even if you are foolish enough to subscribe to the concept of 'race' as a taxonomic system for describing your fellow humans, or the delimiting factor that prescribes the boundaries of your nation, the Scots and English are not separate races. It is not racist to say that a man cannot be a Scot because he has an English accent, it is racist to say that a man cannot be Scottish because he is black. The former is discrimination, the latter is racism.