Wednesday 21st November 2007. For the England football team, it stands as a dark day in their often lacklustre history. A 3-2 defeat, at Wembley, to Croatia meant that they would be playing no part in Euro 2008, he first time the country had failed to qualify for an international tournament since the World Cup in 1994.
The game encapsulated the Football Association’s folly, having sacked Sven-Goran Eriksson for the crime of failing to elevate the side beyond the quarter-finals of the previous three tournaments, they made an arsing great cock up of appointing his successor, having to plump for Eriksson’s number two, the affable, if hopeless, Steve McClaren after botching contract negotiations with Luis Felipe Scolari and dismissing Martin O’Neill’s application because of his refusal to play the role of media whore.
So, thus ended McClaren, with the image of his pained expression peeking out from underneath a sodden England-emblazoned umbrella as his empire crumbled to be the only abiding memory of his stumbling and almost universally unpopular 19 months at the helm. And now England look to rebuild under Italian Fabio Capello’s watchful gaze. Will he succeed where all but one of England’s former managers have failed, and finally bring some silverware home to allow Umbro the chance to sew a second gold star next to the sole, sad looking one currently affixed to the England kit, as a constant reminder of that one triumph in 1966? Well maybe, but this column isn’t about dwelling on all that, on fixating on the England squad toddling off to play a meaningless friendly with Trinidad and Tobago while the rest of Europe’s giants prepare for the Euro 2008 finals. No, this column is to celebrate the fact that England aren’t there, rather than bemoan it.
I may be going against the general feeling of this proud-despite-all-the-evidence island, with many approaching the tournament with a sense of bored detachment and the broadcasters desperately scurrying around to justify why the latest edition of “Britain’s Got Idiots” or “Strictly Desperate Celebrities” has been shunted around the TV listings in favour of coverage of the Czech Republic’s game against Switzerland, I steadfastly refuse to join the apathy this England-less tournament is generating. It’s going to be great!
The main reason for my optimism is that this time we get to avoid all the inevitable media hype surrounding England’s chances. No “support our boys” posters free inside copies of The Sun, no stupid plastic St George’s flags to attach to your car on sale in Halfords, no blanket coverage on Sky Sports News of England’s training camp, with an excitable reporter delivering anecdotes about what the players had for lunch and who is rooming with David Beckham and other such pearls of wisdom. No, for once everyone has to stop relentlessly focusing on England’s false hope, and actually pay some attention to the football.
And in terms of the football, we should be in for some cracking games. Some criticism has been made as to the quality of some teams, in particular the pair of host nations who, to be fair, would probably have struggled to make it this far without the qualification immunity they were granted as the hosts. But that is not to say that we don’t have plenty to look forward to. Germany, Italy, France and Spain, the quadruplets of European powerhouses, all have quality teams ready to do battle, while Portugal, the Netherlands, Russia and many more will hope to have more than a slight say in matters.
And all this without the gaggle of drunken, leery England “fans” congregating in pubs and bars around the country (and over at the tournament) to chant loudly and obnoxiously. I don’t know what it is about England games that seem to bring the worst kind of fan to the forefront, but it’ll be nice to sit in a comfy bar, watching some great football, without getting half a pint of Carling spilled down the back of your neck by some yob behind you busy pogoing up and down and singing the cocking Great Escape theme.
On top of all of this, maybe, just maybe, this humiliating summer of English failure will bring some much-needed humility to the table for everyone associated with the sport. No more assumptions that we have some form of God-given right to be a part of every major tournament going, no more deification of average players as if they were a team full of second comings, no more of any of it. Simply a rational assessment that England are a fair-to-good team who should ideally be setting their targets for qualification for a tournament and then taking it from there, rather than treating anything less than a 5-0 win in the final as some sort of failure.
Sadly, the likelihood is that none of that will happen. In football, as with so many other sports and walks of life in general, we are fed by a constant hype-driven media machine, designed to build the better-than-the-rests up to ridiculous heights, before delighting in bringing them down with a bang. There can be no “quite good” or “moderate success”, only world domination or abject failure.
Still, at least there will be none of that this summer, so if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to prepare to enjoy it.
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