England, the World Cup and a nation expects… The usual calamity
By Derek Ross
In less than 80 days England will kick off their latest World Cup odyssey against their initial Group G opponents, Tunisia.
A nice and easy one to set us on the usual road to disaster. Yes folks, it’s almost that time again when we remind the entire footballing world how to turn wine into water!
Now I’m sure there are many reasons why England cannot win the World Cup and I simply don’t have the room in this column to mention all of them, so I’ll briefly mention just eight. Portugal. Brazil. France, Spain. Argentina. Germany Belgium and… themselves.
And I won’t mention our traditional, shaky World Cup defending, which for this tournament has been honed into its usual false sense of security during a qualifying campaign which saw our, world-class, ( I’ll be demolishing our notions of this in my next piece), heroes demolish half a dozen versions of the Dog & Duck.
Don’t forget we haven’t won a penalty shoot-out since the Spanish Armada stayed on-side before making a late, blind-sided run across the channel!
Since then, adorning the offices of the FA along with its hand-painted de Gournay wallpaper is one World Cup and the severed heads of two hundred failed managers plus a book of failures that’s larger than Neil Ruddock! A place for Gareth Southgate’s head has already been prepared. Apparently he got the space reserved for Sam Allardyce!
Now, I could be wrong, but in my experience…
More from World Cup
- Spain appoint de la Fuente as the new manager as they part ways with Luis Enrique
- Highlighting Leeds United’s Tyler Adams and his performances for the USMNT
- Aimless Germany need tactical re-think to keep their World Cup alive
- Brazil set to slew underdogs Serbia in their World Cup group G opener
- Previewing Fernando Santos’ Portugal Side For The World Cup 2022
Now, I could be wrong, but in my experience there is only one thing that we can predict with one hundred per-cent certainty at this year’s tournament, same as all the other ones, and that is…
it will all end in tears, handwringing, bouts of fan violence, recriminations, calls for a chimpanzee to be the next England Manager, we’ve tried everything else at this stage, and a six month debate as to who should be the next England Captain. Yes indeed, we always get to the important things first!
It’s voyeuristic I know, but watching England’s four yearly car-crash is one of the World Cup’s, if not world sport’s main attractions. We don’t just lose, we’re the world champions of footballing disasters.
Personally I think this is because whenever you listen to the plethora of over-confident, largely dismissive ex-players and the usually never kicked a ball in anger, media football pundits.
TalkSPORT and Sky Sports being the worst offenders, you will always hear these ‘experts’ use the word ‘should’. Should is our footballing default word. But since 1970 we still haven’t learned that ‘should’ more often than not, turns into ‘can’t.’
Below I have listed just a few disasters where the casual refrain ‘Should’ beat them, was uttered before our noses were proverbially rubbed into the turf.
United States 1 England 0, 1950 World Cup group stage, June 1950
England 0-1 Scotland, Euro 2000 qualifying play-off second leg, November 1999
Sweden 2-1 England, Euro 1992 group stage, June 1992
Northern Ireland 1-0 England, 2006 World Cup qualifier, September 2005
England 0-1 Republic of Ireland, Euro 1988 group stage, June 1988
England 2 Croatia 3, Euro 2008 qualifier, November 2007
England 1-2 Iceland, Euro 2016 last-16, June 2016
England V Tunisia, 2018 World Cup group stage ? SHOULD
England v Panama. 2018 World Cup group stage ? SHOULD
Next: More from The Top Flight
Let’s hope I’m wrong eh? Maybe, just maybe this time things will be different won’t they and England will reach the holy grail of the quarter-final?
Personally, I think there’s more chance of Alan Pardew managing Brazil. But hey, it’s a funny old game.