YOU'RE SATIRED!
'Three Loin's In the Dirt...'
Alain Sucrose june 28th 2010 Awimbawae Private Tiger Reserve, South Africa
Uh Oh! Completely predictable event shocks English public! We are out of the World Cup, Ladies and Gentlemen, I kid you not. That’s if any of you are left to read this, that the Gentlemen haven’t been locked up for the night and the ladies aren’t at the battered women’s refuge, hiding, with blackened eyes, shaking a polystyrene cup of Luke warm milky tea (seriously, these things always increase when England lose). Are you surprised? Shocked? I’m not. Oh but I would say that, wouldn’t I?
The truth is, that we seem to get amnesia every few years (at the time of major football tournaments) we fall for the adverts, for the media hype, we see the premiership sealed bubble and think ‘this time our boys can bring football home!’ And, why do we do it? Because we think we are in football’s elite? Well, we aren’t. But beyond that, we lose sight of what it is, a game where things can quite easily, go wrong. But doesn’t it always seem to go wrong for England? And why is that? My own pet theory, one of millions offered in the (un)Silent Witness-esque post mortems offered ad nauseum, is that the players are, not being the smartest bunch, are finely honed cogs, yanked out of finely tuned premiership machines, and forced into an England machine, where they just don’t work properly. As we all know, try and do that with rigid, inflexible parts, and the machine either stalls, breaks down, or blows up. Remind you of anything? It’s stating the obvious I know, but then that’s the art of football punditry for you.
At least we can solve the energy crisis! Take down the flags, the tat, the T-shirts, the bunting, and burn it. It will last through to 2050, releasing only large emissions of disappointment and self loathing, but very little CO2. The truth is, it is easy to be cynical, but as we know, something went badly wrong. But it is only football. What you tend to find, is people either go too far, either way; the sour cynics who hate it, but love to moan about it, they who go on about how England are rubbish, how football is a waste of money, and how footballers are a bunch of spit roasting pampered demigod’s with dropped rape charges against their names. But to them, I say, you may be right, but then wine doesn’t have hints of cherry, or oak, it’s in your mind. Caviar, is fish eggs. Honest, fish eggs. People love stupid things, and see things in them that aren’t really there.
Then there are the nuts who dress up as Templar Knights (a bunch of bigoted fundamentalist murdering war mongers, nice image isn’t it?) and sell a kidney to have the chance to be in a position to sell a lung to pay for a ticket from a dodgy tout before the ‘big game’ (that is the second bleeding round!). These types are decent enough, often working people, but do they ever learn? I know of the romanticism of hedging your bets, going all out, and that the reward would be worth it, but paying seven grand say, unless you are stinking rich like me, is not worth doing so on this England team. I watched the Germany game from the executive suite. Pretty awful. I was visited by Sepp Blatter at half time, when he broke down in front of me, saying ‘Alain, I know, It was a goal, but, these a camera, I can’t implement them, they can steal a the soul of the beautiful a game’ Disgusted, I contemplated throwing him in the Great White tank set up in the VIP area. Realizing he was drunk, and had a tear in his tiny eye, I pitied him.
The truth is, that football should adopt goal line technologies. I’d happily supply it. ‘Disallowed goals brought to you by Hamstrands, the pork that works for you’. Of course it won’t be, FIFA are inept fools, who were glad to see England go out I’m sure. But I am telling you the secret of watching football, from a man that once was the chairman of the mighty Tottenham Hotspots. Enjoy, but don’t obsess. Take the middle ground. Get excited, but temper your optimism, with realism. That way, you can laugh when the performances go wrong. Don’t listen to the media too much. Wayne Rooney is not world class. He was awful. And not a nice chap either, no role model or Sportsman. Substituted against Slovenia, he did not even clap the quite excellent crowd, just days after insulting another England crowd with a numbskull attempt at sarcasm ‘nice to see your home fans; booing you’ How dare he? And hold off on the knife sharpening. Let’s not sacrifice Fabio Cappello on a bonfire, to appease the spirit of Bobby Moore. Literally, or metaphorically. Most of the blame lies with the players, and can anyone else do any better? Err no.
John Terry has a lot to answer for. He should have been captain, and the role of captain should not be so important. I disagreed with the circus that drove him out, but he should have kept it in his pants, really, a team mate's girlfriend, pretty low in a game where team unity and loyalty is inscribed in players since being young boys. But I can’t be bothered with a detailed autopsy right now, I am sick of hearing them really. But what then, will happen now? We all know the script, blame the players for not caring, the manager’s tactics, then sack manager. The script is old, well thumbed, the dust is being blown off it now, and it’s about to be read. The interesting thing, is that every time we have that narrative, we also get those who want to see a complete shake up of the game, limits on foreigners (Tory style caps?) a national academy, more playing fields etc. That’s probably right, but won’t happen. Another old chestnut for you, why not, the English game has been ruined by money. How? Money is great. I personally benefit from the corporate nature of the premiership, free tickets and all. But it forces out English talent in favour of imports, it sees talent rotting in contracts after being snapped up by big teams in reserve teams, it sees the whole ethos of the game become a business orientated one, cut off from the grass roots of kids dreaming of playing football for England, fans owning clubs. The Kids are still there, but they are fewer. And fewer less make it through, and even then, fewer still make it successfully into the national team.
But remember, it’s only football! And something quite remarkable will happen this week, the English will, reluctantly, become British again. Why? Because it’s Wimbledon week two! And Mr Murray is still in it! He won’t win, most likely, but we can start to dream again. Will all those flags be dug out, and will we see a rush on blue paint to amend them? Oh and the premiership returns, not much over a month away, and all those players in the World Cup, who were so much better than us, screw us twice, with there inflated price tags screwing our clubs out of money, not all have a lot of. Maybe we need to go back to the 19th century, and start inventing sports again? ones that we are best at, then export them to the world and see them beat us again. Any ideas? How about happy slapping? I hear it’s supposed to be quite fun..
The truth is, that we seem to get amnesia every few years (at the time of major football tournaments) we fall for the adverts, for the media hype, we see the premiership sealed bubble and think ‘this time our boys can bring football home!’ And, why do we do it? Because we think we are in football’s elite? Well, we aren’t. But beyond that, we lose sight of what it is, a game where things can quite easily, go wrong. But doesn’t it always seem to go wrong for England? And why is that? My own pet theory, one of millions offered in the (un)Silent Witness-esque post mortems offered ad nauseum, is that the players are, not being the smartest bunch, are finely honed cogs, yanked out of finely tuned premiership machines, and forced into an England machine, where they just don’t work properly. As we all know, try and do that with rigid, inflexible parts, and the machine either stalls, breaks down, or blows up. Remind you of anything? It’s stating the obvious I know, but then that’s the art of football punditry for you.
At least we can solve the energy crisis! Take down the flags, the tat, the T-shirts, the bunting, and burn it. It will last through to 2050, releasing only large emissions of disappointment and self loathing, but very little CO2. The truth is, it is easy to be cynical, but as we know, something went badly wrong. But it is only football. What you tend to find, is people either go too far, either way; the sour cynics who hate it, but love to moan about it, they who go on about how England are rubbish, how football is a waste of money, and how footballers are a bunch of spit roasting pampered demigod’s with dropped rape charges against their names. But to them, I say, you may be right, but then wine doesn’t have hints of cherry, or oak, it’s in your mind. Caviar, is fish eggs. Honest, fish eggs. People love stupid things, and see things in them that aren’t really there.
Then there are the nuts who dress up as Templar Knights (a bunch of bigoted fundamentalist murdering war mongers, nice image isn’t it?) and sell a kidney to have the chance to be in a position to sell a lung to pay for a ticket from a dodgy tout before the ‘big game’ (that is the second bleeding round!). These types are decent enough, often working people, but do they ever learn? I know of the romanticism of hedging your bets, going all out, and that the reward would be worth it, but paying seven grand say, unless you are stinking rich like me, is not worth doing so on this England team. I watched the Germany game from the executive suite. Pretty awful. I was visited by Sepp Blatter at half time, when he broke down in front of me, saying ‘Alain, I know, It was a goal, but, these a camera, I can’t implement them, they can steal a the soul of the beautiful a game’ Disgusted, I contemplated throwing him in the Great White tank set up in the VIP area. Realizing he was drunk, and had a tear in his tiny eye, I pitied him.
The truth is, that football should adopt goal line technologies. I’d happily supply it. ‘Disallowed goals brought to you by Hamstrands, the pork that works for you’. Of course it won’t be, FIFA are inept fools, who were glad to see England go out I’m sure. But I am telling you the secret of watching football, from a man that once was the chairman of the mighty Tottenham Hotspots. Enjoy, but don’t obsess. Take the middle ground. Get excited, but temper your optimism, with realism. That way, you can laugh when the performances go wrong. Don’t listen to the media too much. Wayne Rooney is not world class. He was awful. And not a nice chap either, no role model or Sportsman. Substituted against Slovenia, he did not even clap the quite excellent crowd, just days after insulting another England crowd with a numbskull attempt at sarcasm ‘nice to see your home fans; booing you’ How dare he? And hold off on the knife sharpening. Let’s not sacrifice Fabio Cappello on a bonfire, to appease the spirit of Bobby Moore. Literally, or metaphorically. Most of the blame lies with the players, and can anyone else do any better? Err no.
John Terry has a lot to answer for. He should have been captain, and the role of captain should not be so important. I disagreed with the circus that drove him out, but he should have kept it in his pants, really, a team mate's girlfriend, pretty low in a game where team unity and loyalty is inscribed in players since being young boys. But I can’t be bothered with a detailed autopsy right now, I am sick of hearing them really. But what then, will happen now? We all know the script, blame the players for not caring, the manager’s tactics, then sack manager. The script is old, well thumbed, the dust is being blown off it now, and it’s about to be read. The interesting thing, is that every time we have that narrative, we also get those who want to see a complete shake up of the game, limits on foreigners (Tory style caps?) a national academy, more playing fields etc. That’s probably right, but won’t happen. Another old chestnut for you, why not, the English game has been ruined by money. How? Money is great. I personally benefit from the corporate nature of the premiership, free tickets and all. But it forces out English talent in favour of imports, it sees talent rotting in contracts after being snapped up by big teams in reserve teams, it sees the whole ethos of the game become a business orientated one, cut off from the grass roots of kids dreaming of playing football for England, fans owning clubs. The Kids are still there, but they are fewer. And fewer less make it through, and even then, fewer still make it successfully into the national team.
But remember, it’s only football! And something quite remarkable will happen this week, the English will, reluctantly, become British again. Why? Because it’s Wimbledon week two! And Mr Murray is still in it! He won’t win, most likely, but we can start to dream again. Will all those flags be dug out, and will we see a rush on blue paint to amend them? Oh and the premiership returns, not much over a month away, and all those players in the World Cup, who were so much better than us, screw us twice, with there inflated price tags screwing our clubs out of money, not all have a lot of. Maybe we need to go back to the 19th century, and start inventing sports again? ones that we are best at, then export them to the world and see them beat us again. Any ideas? How about happy slapping? I hear it’s supposed to be quite fun..
Comments/Customer Support..
Our pathetic football team could do with reading Henry V before every kick off (if an ape like Rooney can read, that is). Or have Capello read out inspiring parts from said Shakespeare play:
'We few, we happy few, we band of brothers
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother;"
We should not have even got to the Quarter Finals, by the way. Shocking. Truly shocking