There are two things I can’t wait to see the back of. Euro 2016 and the referendum. I am worn out by both, I can barely be bothered to argue or debate either of them. I just want normal life to resume.
It is rarely fun being an England football fan. With every tournament that comes along, I have an initial sense of gloom and foreboding once we qualify, then optimism builds, usually based on no evidence at all. It was the same this year. I fell for the “We’ve got an exciting young team!” argument because it looked like we might have had one. I closed my eyes when it came to the central defenders, none of whom are remotely international class, and I overlooked the inevitable absence of a midfield playmaker. “We’ve got goals!” I thought. We’ll be all right. And that’s just it: we’ve been all right.
Roy Hodgson, for all his coaching and managerial experience, has been the usual England manager, not knowing his best team, probably because there isn’t a best team. Cramming in the players we all expect to play, putting some square pegs into round holes, smacks of Paul Scholes syndrome, playing him out of position because the manager felt he had to accommodate everyone else. Now, Hodgson’s team is oh-so-predictable. Little happens in broken play, where goals usually happen, because everyone knows what is going to happen.
It hasn’t helped that we have played three average teams – actually, Russia are less than average – who parked the bus. When you have players who can’t dribble, which means most of the squad, it’s dull passing followed by an aimless cross. Hodgson tried to address this by playing Jack Wilshere, a supremely gifted footballer, but whatever the stats were telling the England medical team, the lad is nowhere near sharp enough to play international football at the moment. He might be sailing through the medical tests but he isn’t match fit.
Tournament football is usually like this. We flatter in qualifying but we never deceive the big teams if we muddle into the latter stages. My hope – and here I go again, hope indeed! – is that the knock out stages will see something better than attack versus defence and that if we play a “lesser” team they will “have a go”. But maybe they won’t and they’ll park the bus and hope for penalties. And we know what happens then.
I am neither optimistic or pessimistic. In fact, I am becoming increasingly numb about the whole thing.
And that referendum. I became tired of it many weeks ago. Whilst the Remain camp has long won the economic argument – even the Leave group now openly admits the economy will take a big hit if we step into the dark and quit the EU – Cameron’s ‘Project Fear’ has dulled my senses. I happen to think that much of ‘Project Fear’ is justified, but it would have been nice if the office Remain group had been more positive. The Labour campaign, with the lukewarm support of Jeremy Corbyn, has at least concentrated on the positive, seeking to secure improvements for working people, ensuring that basic workers rights are maintained. But the positive aspects have been far and few between.
In contrast to ‘Project Fear’, the Leave group has been ‘Project Lies’. Lies about how much we pay, lies about Turkey joining the EU, lies (from neoliberals who oppose the very notion of the NHS) that money so called saved upon leaving the EU could be spent on the NHS, lies about a European Army, lies about our sovereignty, lies about the fishing industry and Nigel Farage, employing the politics of Nazi Germany.
Of course, not ever Brexiter is a dishonest neoliberal, but then not ever Remain supporter is a Tory who went to Eton and was in the Bullingdon Club.
I want England to win the Euros (ha ha) but I also want to be put out of my misery sooner rather than later. I want Britain to remain in the EU, but I could do without this endless slanging match that has posed for debate.
I want my country back again and my life back again. Hopefully, within a few days I might have both. Before then, I’ll have one more go on each subject to try and persuade the one person in the land who has not yet made up her mind on the EU referendum that we must stay in the EU and why England really could win the European Championships, assuming we get past Portugal, France, Germany and Wales. Actually, one of these things may not happen.
