Tag: European Championship
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Safegate
‘We don’t have a replacement for Kalvin Phillips’. Let that sink in for a moment. Gareth Southgate has a team that should be bubbling with the Bundesliga top scorer, the season’s outstanding player in La Liga, and a fresh dollop of Premiership cream. And yet, he is bamboozled by the challenge of replacing a player…
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Tap-In
Another day, another Team England loss, and two hours of my life was gone forever. Sometimes I think I’ll never learn. Cue the rearguard. The shambolic shitshow shoo-in was predictably re-imagined by the client press as an inevitable defeat in the wake of the new Brazilian wonderkid. The ‘new Romario’, no less. Nothing Gareth could…
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Timewasters
So, England snagged a win on Italian turf for the first time since 1961. Along the way, both fullbacks were booked for timewasting, which made the crowd wonder whether Gareth Southgate was up for a lifetime achievement award. Meanwhile, the Commons Standards Committee did their utmost to stepover past Boris and ended up going full…
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Lez We Forget
Another day, another bandwagon. And so the Women’s Euros came to pass. If people want to celebrate a gang of lesbians playing in slow-mo to the standard of a very average regional non-league team, that’s fine. But let’s not confuse it with sporting excellence. Just for context, in 2017 the US team played a match…
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Penalty Points
Once again, racist abuse and the Government’s response to it have made the headlines. The three England players who botched their spot-kicks bore the brunt of racist abuse in the aftermath, and the great and good reached for their telescopes so that they might have a clearer view of the scene by peering into the…
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Jester Politics
So England never made the grade, but some sort of political row was as nailed on as Italian on-field cynicism. Seriously, though, the Azurri deserved their victory. Over and above the match itself, it was always going to be the case that a Three Lions debacle would see a fringe of racist nutters having a…
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Replica Shirks
Shell-shocked, I’ve been eating gargantuan wedges of humble pie after Gareth Southgate steered the Three Lions to their first major final in 55 years. Whatever the ultimate outcome, the team has, after a sluggish start, performed magnificently. Forget the tactical analysis, and that’s not just because, like most punters, I don’t really understand the technicalities.…
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It’s Coming Home
So, Euro 2020 is underway, and the immediate focal point will doubtless be the knee-taking that will almost certainly overshadow our chance-taking. We will therefore be showing the red card to racism but getting fervently behind our respective teams, right? Now that raises an uncomfortable question regarding our own comfort with football patriotism. If racism…
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Heart Failure
When Christian Eriksen hit the deck during the Denmark-Finland match, it was a horrible moment. But it was not just the player collapsing, it was also the integrity of much of the viewing public who sprang into life on social media. Yes, while the poor chap lay prostrate on the pitch and in the sick…
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Knee Jerk
Reportedly, Gareth Southgate is to hold urgent talks with the England squad about taking the knee. In all truth, he’d be better off talking to them about taking the piss. That performance versus Austrian opposition would have had Neville Chamberlain’s paper fluttering in the wind. In elite football terms, we’re not waving but drowning. As…
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