I feel like shooting most English journalists
Ok, maybe that title is a little dramatic, but reading the reports of England’s 1-0 win over Equador yesterday are just so depressing. The media seem determined to tear England apart rather than accurately report the match. Don’t get me wrong, there was nothing amazing about England’s performance yesterday, but neither did we look like losing, as some reporters implied. Oh, and apparently it’s all luck that we’re still in the tournament. The fact that we have played 4, won 3, and drawn 1, is obviously irrelevant. And the truth of the matter is that if Frank Lampard could remember how to shoot on target, we’d of scored about an additional 5 goals in this tournament so far.
England are definitely well short of playing their best football, but isn’t that a good thing? We are doing enough to beat the opposition in every match that we play. We may not be wowing people with energetic and stylish football, but we are doing enough to win whilst having a lot more still to offer And doesn’t that put us in a better position? The other teams will start to underestimate us and have no sense of how well we can play. We will definitely need to keep stepping it up with every game we play. Portugal will be our toughest game so far, but I am pretty confident we will rise up to the level we need to beat them and set up a very nice semi-final with Brazil. And that, I think, would be a great game that would bring the best out of both sides.
Back to the English press though, I just hope they are made to eat their words. (Obviously if we did go on to win the World Cup, they would claim they knew that all along however!) They seem more intent on being anti the manager and David Beckham than they do being for the England team. They would rather see Sven and Becks fail (and be proved right in their eyes) than see England win the World Cup. And that frustrates me a lot!
Anyway, rant over. Thanks for listening! Did you see the game? What were your thoughts?
technorati tags: football, world cup, england, english press, media
June 26th, 2006 at 12:01 pm
Well, absolutely, Sam. Not the best game, but a definite step up with the new formation and Rooney staying the course. As for the english press, I concur with Pete Garrett, once of Midnight Oil who referred to them it “that viralent and cynical amoeba”. Sure sometimes they expose things that shouldn’t be, but most of the time the papers and other media seem to trade in shabby sensationalism, gutter level exploitation and startling, shameless arrogance. It would be nice to see an editor or two exposed for their own hypocrisy. I once heard one prominent editor admit that he knew that there were a number of his colleagues who had dreadful skeletons in the cupboards, (actually more like photos hidden in their top drawers), that would bring them crashing down if it weren’t for the kind of ‘honour amongst thieves’ protocol that operates in ‘Fleet Street’. Ho hum, is that three fingers I see pointing back at me?
Still, England for the cup, and if not, Brasil for the cup, and if not, let’s just hope Australia don’t win it or we’ll never hear the end of it!
June 26th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
There hasn’t been much press coverage here in the States so I can’t really comment. Lol. I guess I would just say this: At least you can watch the matches.
Being five hours behind puts all the matches squarely in the middle of the American work day, and because soccer fans are the red-headed step-children of the American sports networks, the networks haven’t taken advantage of very many of the rights they bought to re-air the important matches in the evenings, when we’re off work. Apparently even Poker tournaments draw more viewers (although that’s a bit of a fad right now and I doubt the interest will last terribly long). For all England’s negative spin, they do at least make it possible for you to watch the matches, if you like.
-Mel
June 26th, 2006 at 1:49 pm
snakesanddoves - thanks for stopping by. And you’re right, Australia winning the world cup would be a national disaster!
Mel - the last world cup was in Japan which meant a lot of our matches were in the middle of the work day. For England games though we were allowed to do flexi time, watch the games, and make the hours up later. I guess football isn’t quite on the level of people being allowed out from work to watch the games in the US yet?!
By the way, there’s definitely something wrong with the people of America if there is more demand for poker than the World Cup!