Saturday, October 14, 2006

13/10/06 Soap of the Day



Ok forget "Eastenders", "Coronation Street", "Emmerdale" etc etc...
The most compelling soap drama in town these days is the England Football Team. It's a fantastic spectacle.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not a sad little parochial-minded anti-English Scottish person. It's just a great story to follow...
To be honest, I would be quite happy to see England realise the sum of their parts and succeed in world football.
Their long suffering fans deserve it.
I know England fans still get a pretty bad press, but they're mostly decent people.
I was in Amsterdam during Euro 2000 and went to see Spain vs Slovenia.
What struck me at the time was the thousands of English neutral fans who had travelled just to see a game.
A lot of them spoke of their regret that they felt uncomfortable going to support England at their games due to all the baggage that surrounds English supporters.
I felt sorry for them, but was impressed at the fact they had all travelled there just through a general love of football, and a wish to see a piece of Euro 2000 in a relaxed, friendly environment.
But anyway, as I suspected, the FA look to have made a complete arse of appointing Sven's successor.
McLaren doesn't convince at all, and his club record is at best, mediocre...
And he brings back Terry Venables, who has dined out on his Euro 96 campaign even though England only really played well in one game (against Holland)...
I suspect the 3-5-2 formation was largely Terry's big idea...!
They must realise now that Martin O'Neill was the one that got away ; particularly since he's made such a confident start at turning things around at Aston Villa.
I expect that his candidature was damaged by having worked in Scotland for a few years. The Scottish League is dismissed as a mickey mouse irrelevance by the powers that be down South (with some justification)...
However, his previous achievements in England and his European success at Celtic in the Champions League and UEFA Cup should have counted for more...
But it's too late now...!
Anyway, I was watching England v Croatia in a pub in Manchester.
I had tremendous difficulty keeping a straight face when the goalkeeper had his by now famous mishap.
I was reminded of the scene from "Life of Brian" when Michael Palin's Roman character discusses the imminent arrival of his friend "Biggus Dickus".
This causes a prolonged, agonising suppression of laughter by the Roman guards.
That was me that was.
I couldn't believe that the press slaughtered the goalkeeper the next day for his "blunder".
There is no reason to be found in the coverage of football down there...It is completely hysterical and over-the-top.
Anyway, after the game, an English supporter bared his member in the general direction of Wayne Rooney, and shouted that he wished to urinate on the aforementioned out-of-form England striker.
Rooney then gave hima V sign, and is now in trouble...!
The next morning I woke up to hear a series of radio callers demand the return of David Beckham to the team.
Yes, that's right, the same Mr Beckham who had his last decent game for England in 2001 against Greece, and who can't currently get into the Real Madrid starting line-up...
Madness...!
Then Max Clifford appeared talking on behalf of Steve McLaren...
Max Clifford? The same chap who represented Faria Alam when the scandal broke about her having concurrent affairs with FA personnel?
Yes, indeed...I expect that the FA must have been delighted to see him getting involved...!
But now he's resigned from his position, and I heard him say on the radio last night that Steve McLaren "is not the man that I thought he was"...
A very weird and undoubtedly, ultimately damaging remark...
I'm intrigued to watch the next chapter of this extraordinary real life drama...
It's a pity there is 5 months before the next Euro 2008 qualifier...! Darn...!
Although, we do have the Wembley construction saga to keep us interested in the meantime...
Jeez, sorry this blog has had too much football in it of late...
I'll stop now...

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I see St Johnstone are now top of Division one.

What do you think about that then?

jimbo said...

I'm absolutely thrilled by the news...!