When I chose a football team to support, it was a no-brainer. Coventry City were the closest team to me growing up, so I supported them. Unlike arsewipes like Paddy Kieltey and James Nesbitt, I didn’t just arbitrarily pick the team at the top of the league and bang on about “us” as though they were born and bred in Manchester and aren’t just diving on some bandwagon. It’s as though they’re playing a game with cheats on – when they cheer a goal, there’s nothing behind it, there’s no reason to get excited.

The point I’m making is that when Coventry play, there’s no expectation, no hope, nothing to get excited about – the best I hope for generally is a decent win, try not to lose or do anything stupid. And even if the game only has one goal, but there’s a million shots against the post, a crazy injury, some wacky skill or a dog on the pitch, the match report in the Sunday Times will still only say “Coventry lost 1-0 to…” I like that, I can cope with that. Low key, getting on with being shit in peace. (Hilariously, Word wanted that last sentence to say “shot in peace”. Sure, why not?)

All of this makes England’s appearances all the more weird. Where every pass, shot and tackle is dissected by amateur tacticians (both at home and on the TV) and nothing can be accepted without question after question. Where Robert Green is on the front page of every newspaper in some way over the week. Where the press claim to be behind the team, but can’t resist having a cheeky dig at him wherever possible. Will he be dropped? Should he be dropped? Is David James just as error prone?

Where everything is divided firmly into two camps: Brilliant, or shit. England’s easy group? Brilliant. Emile Heskey? Shit. Nothing is a shade of grey, anywhere in the middle. Hero to villain. Zero to hero. Keep it all easy. Consequently, England play as a bag of nerves: One mistake and you’re on the front cover of the Sun with your head Photoshopped onto a donkey’s body. Who needs that?
I’m writing this after England’s bleak performance against Algeria. Devoid of ideas, they played very poorly. It’d be churlish to point out names, but Johnson, Lampard, Heskey, Rooney and Wright-Phillips were all notably poor. Still, we’re going to win the World Cup, right? Cos that’s what The Sun want us to believe in those horrendous adverts: Prematurely placing two stars above the badge. Do we believe we can win? Really? Objectively? God no. But England are above average, and therefore Brilliant. Now we’ve had two poor results, and swung below average: Shit.

And when we’re shit, we need a scapegoat. Thanks Rob Green. Now it’ll be Capello. The team are English and World Class, the best out there. This wacky foreigner. What does he know about England and football? When we were winning in qualifying, he was Brilliant. Now, he’s Shit. What does he know? I mean, he’s only won nine league titles and the Champion’s League. What does he know compared to Andy Townsend and Kevin Keegan?

What’s the point of this? To try and regain some perspective. The country has gone mental with cheap flags adorning everything, non-football fans taking their four-yearly sojourn into the World Cup, the media going overboard about our chances. Calm down, take a step back and realise that England are just quite good. Spain are ranked second in the world and they lost. Portugal didn’t win. Germany lost. France have been abysmal. Croatia didn’t even qualify. And that’s just in the top ten.

England played badly and didn’t deserve to win, but to cheaply scapegoat and write things off in huge brushstrokes is a massive mistake. Just two years ago, we didn’t even qualify. Of course that performance just wasn’t good enough, but stop expecting the World from them in every game, and maybe you won’t be so disappointed.

Related posts (auto-generated, so may be unrelated):

  1. Top 5: Rubbish England Songs The World cup is just three weeks away, which means...