Anyone But England

Is it really Anyone But England?

Erm, actually probably not.

There are few sides who rile the passionate UK regionnaire more so than the English 1st XI – but there may be a few, at least in my book.

One such crowd I can never support no matter how gifted certain individuals they produce are the Argentines.  Everything I dislike about the general deterioration of classic British football – the arrival of the prima donna attitude, the play-acting on and off the pitch – I already see endemic in the Argie psyche.  National stereotyping it may be but that’s international football for you.

Plus there’s the small matter of the Falklands and South Georgia.

And then there’s the Germans.

Theoretically I shouldn’t like them much.  History does them no favours and I know not of any football fan who doesn’t know their history.  But in the modern day game the German fan-owned clubs together with their atmospheric supporters’ bars and proper stadia terracing Nirvana are a refreshing break from the corporate & celeb infested smorgasbord of the drop-dead ordinary we find ourselves subsumed by in Britain.

Certainly any Germans I’ve met on the international football trail are quite supportive of what my Wee Country’s done so I’ll reserve judgement on them til I have to.

And a bit about me – I’m a proud Ulsterman who finds himself living, working in London Town and battening down the hatches in preparation for whatever lies ahead, but one’s things for sure it won’t be about anything coming home anytime soon.

For the next couple of months this will be my outlet as the capital of the Anglophile world begins it’s descent into media-controlled temporal insanity.

Don’t get me wrong.  I’m not some raving lunatic nat from the regions unable to come to terms with the fact I’m earning my keep in Englandistan.

I’m a reservist member of Her Majesty’s Maritime Regiment of Foot, I’ve a tat of another home nation on my leg and at the last election I voted Tory.

And fundamentally I don’t mind the England team (and I mean that as opposed to some half-baked excuse for any atavistic predilections).

So why the agro?  well…

It’s basically a media thing.

The paparazzi legion.

And so it goes – the same sources of drivel that have carried dead donkey Beckham as a newsworthy source since he decided to retire from football after Real go into overdrive as every minor celeb fucktard who once did a shit in the same toilet as an England squad member gets trotted out for an astonishingly predictable prediction of “Yeah!  Come on, England!  I think we’ll do it!”.  Go back to your cocaine-addled highs in mediocrity please.

Then on to the WAGs, who while a stunning fit for their partners – overrated as the majority surely are (Colleen Fucking McLoughlin ffs!), are an intoxicating mix of the nothingness that lies at the heart of the vacuous life of the modern day Premiership footballer and the media sideshow’s obsession with a particularly jaundiced view of ‘reality’.

All things considered then we don’t get our festival of football.  We don’t get to saviour the atmosphere as even though it’s being beamed out 24-7 it’s through this myopic filter of cluelessly misplaced Engurlund trivia masquerading as news.

But enough about the ephemeral stuff, because the worst of it is yet to come;

The little switch that flicks England’s football commentator’s from inanely dull to hyped up uber-nationales that blow up the inconsequential, blindingly miss the obvious and painstakingly read into what is just not there is something that never fails to leave me in a dazed and speechless awe as each finals comes and goes.

The thing is it effects every single one of them without exception.  From the mild mannered days of Jimmy Hill wanking his chin into oblivion at the thought of Complete English Victory (Euro ’96 case in point) – Motson another one springing to mind unable to see beyond particularly cringe-worthy blinkers –  to the most articulate and worldly hack at any of the broadsheets; once a collective England sniffs it’s place in history all semblance of order and the general way of things goes right out the window.

And how fucking un-English is that?

There is one exception though – a single inevitable point of failure that is surely breached in every Anglicised world’s football finals – the epiphany of a gut-wrenching, heart-compacting defeat to an assuredly smug jonny foreigner.  And only after that can we truly enjoy some football.

And so this is the way of things, at least always in my lifetime.  At the back of my mind there is always that worrying, niggling thought…