Friday 11 September 2009

Let's get silly


Nobody chooses to be an England fan - we're saddled with it. We've all spent the quieter moments of major tournaments questioning why we're investing all this emotion in a largely pedestrian outfit, with ideas above its station and a media that likes talking to itself. Most of the finals I've been alive for have suddenly become enjoyable as soon as we're out of the picture - that's why Euro 2008 was so brilliant. Without England to be silly about, football was just a spectacle again and we could bowl around carefree, stick £3 on Spain and come over all composed and perceptive in our punditry. No more screaming and gurning and footstamping, none of those awkward jumpy hugs when we score, no nagging sense of shame about getting in such a tiz. It was great.

But this time we are going, and they reckon it might be different. England look good right now, even allowing for our unhappy knack of overpromising. Fabio Capello is sniffy, terrifying and brilliant, and he's on our side. The media like him, and he doesn't care. The players respect him, and he'd expect no less. He's our greatest asset and he can't get injured.

All this is good. Personally, I'm excited about us all blowing our tops for the next 10 months, stewing and chewing and teamsheeting ourselves into a right old lather. The best thing about talking about football is that nobody really has a clue about any of it. It's completely circular - you can witter on for days about formations and combinations and SWP vs Lennon, because nobody really knows and when it comes down to it we forget the lot in a flash. In 90 little minutes the truth we never saw coming will catch us clean on the nose, and it'll all suddenly seem very obvious and hollow again. That's what it's like - being an England fan is an absurd cycle of extremes, a screaming, boozy kneeslide from false promise to cold truth and back again, seldom tasting the bit between.

I'm not suggesting we take a rational approach to supporting England - balancing the odds would be much less fun. Like everyone else, I'll hope and chinstroke and get wildly indignant about starting Emile Heskey, and it'll be great. But by the time those BBC montages that make real life seem all dreary and grayscale are rolling in July, I reckon I'll feel silly again.

3 comments:

  1. Simon Barnes has written a nice piece about irrational England fans in the Times today. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/columnists/simon_barnes/article6829612.ece

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  2. Spot on. Supporting England during a tournament, I imagine, is rather like going on a bender. Cheerful obliviousness to reality for a short while, followed by a huge whack of pain the next day.

    As bad as the constant disappointment is, after witnessing the overreaction and fallout to the Ashes 05 and the Rugby WC 03 victories, I honestly thinking winning the World Cup would be even worse for English football. We simply don't know how to handle success or how to build on it.

    It seems great minds do indeed think alike :-)

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  3. Just imagine if we won the World Cup and found Maddie on the SAME DAY. National holiday for a week for sure.

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