My thoughts go out to the England haters tonight. Not particularly friendly nor sympathetic thoughts, mind you because the sheer levels of bile and loathing, particularly on social media, have reached obscene proportions. But then, it was always thus. Even Sir Alf Ramsey, who led us to our one and only tournament victory ever, was hounded out of office, never to manage again, when we failed to qualify for the 1974 World Cup. Winning alone, it seems, is never enough.
Did England play well against Slovakia this evening? Of course not. It was another nervous, stuttering performance against a limited but tactically astute and well organised opposition. Our limitations, of which there are many, were ruthlessly exposed again. What our boys do is hang on in there and, as we say in modern parlance ‘find a way to win’.
I’ve seen some amazing stuff tonight. Apparently, Harry Kane is awful, shouldn’t be playing, Bellingham is all hype. And we keep playing backwards and sideways. Why don’t we just hoof it forward like Wimbledon used to do? They won the league playing like that, didn’t they? They didn’t?
Let’s get this latest ‘golden generation’ bollocks out of the way, again. We have some very good players, two world class players, Harry Kane and Jude Bellingham, who would be in the World Squad for the game against Mars. Walker, Stones, Rice, Foden, Mainoo, Guehi and Saka are high class Premier League players. The keeper, Jordan Pickford, is a decent keeper, albeit nowhere near the levels of, say Alisson Becker of Liverpool or Ederson at Man Citeh. The same goes for the rest of the squad. Very good, not great.
The manager picks what he feels is his best team, hands them a game plan and off they go. Sometimes it clicks and the team finds a rhythm, sometimes it doesn’t. How the other team plays matters, too. I was just kidding about Wimbledon: it was shit to watch and in the long term it won’t succeed. Ball retention is vitally important. Launching it forward gives the appearance of being attack-minded, but how positive is it when you simply kick possession away? Sometimes, you just stick to the plan.
“Southgate didn’t make substitutions”, was a common complaint tonight. Any idea why that was? Because in order to build rhythm, you need continuity. Changing the personnel can change the game, but not always in the way you think it will. Sometimes you stick, sometimes you twist. Southgate, eventually, did twist and the unpredictable Toney made a great assist to enable the “awful” Kane to get the winner.
I can only imagine how the haters must have been desolate when Kane scored and when at the end of extra time we ran out winners. “Southgate out and England are shit” will remain the clarion call because in England that is what we do. I sat in my armchair, strangely emotional, happy and relieved. I have known that feeling before: every time England play in a tournament.
It’s the sense of entitlement that gets me, the idea that just because We Are England, we have a divine right to win. Christ, we invented the game. And in every tournament, we are destined to win, until we don’t. It is as if many of our fans are shocked when we aren’t very good. Do they suffer immediate memory loss after every tournament? We all bleat on about the glory days of Italia ’90 and Euro ’96 but we somehow forget how dogshit bad we were at times in both tournaments. Somehow we fail to remember how the media slaughtered Sir Bobby Robson and Terry Venables. Funny that. And now, with Southgate having made England competitive again, and making it to the quarter finals, it is still the end of the world as we know it. “Can’t we change the coach during the tournament?” asked someone. Seriously. Yes, people literally said that.
It is not a coincidence that England haven’t won anything for 58 years. We haven’t been good enough. Each golden generation comes and goes, the occasional superstar emerges, Gazza, Lineker, Carlton Palmer – well not Carlton Palmer or Geoff Thomas for that matter – and in truth the team is stuffed with workhorses and journeymen, albeit some are high quality journeymen. The tournament road is always bumpy and we should surely all know that by now, yet some of us don’t.
I’m just glad that we live to stagger on another day, next Saturday against a slick-passing Swiss team. I suspect that game will suit England more than the first four games, none of which we have lost by the way, because the Swiss will come out to play, which will suit not just the superstars, but also our very good players. I may be wrong, but we often play better against better teams.
If you have ever played football, you will know that winning is a habit. It breeds confidence, you start to believe that you can’t lose, you trust your team mates. I was a crap player but back in the 1980s a team I played for went on an 18 game winning run. We believed that whatever the opposition threw at us, they could not win. It’s an amazing feeling in parks football. It will be the same and much, much more at an elite level.
Gareth Southgate will probably step aside at the end of the Euros and doubtless many fans will be glad to see the back of him. A new bloke is bound to be better. What’s Sam Allardyce up to these days? Or Joey Barton, maybe? Or think about this. Be careful what you wish for.
I like Southgate, I’d keep him. I doubt that anyone could have done much better and most would have done worse. But we won’t keep him because “he’s taken us as far as he can”, supposedly. And actually, he probably has. But I’ll wager no other manager would have done better.
We’re in the last eight, mate. It’s far from pretty, at times it’s downright ugly, but football, to me, will always be about winning. I see no merit in being a good loser because, as Gary Lineker once said, “Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser.” As a piss poor player, I loved winning ugly as much as I enjoyed winning by playing exciting, attractive football. Maybe more.
When the players settle down tonight with a half of shandy, they won’t be wallowing in self pity, grumbling about how badly they played. They’ll say we won, job done. We should say that, too, but we won’t, will we, because we’re only happy when we’re moaning.
Last eight of the Euros, good start. Two wins, two draws. Could do better – should have been four wins and no draws – but the outcome would still be the same. If you’re still upset and angry after tonight, then go and support Wales or Scotland, or even Italy. They’d love to be in our shoes. But they aren’t, are they? A 1-0 win on Saturday, with a goal of Harry Kane’s arse would do for me. The rest of you will be getting ready to have a good whinge. You go your way and I go mine.
