The England Squad

Bill Bailey once said that the English enjoy disappointment. He said this is why we buy Kinder Eggs. I believe this is also why we bother supporting our national football team. Supporting England is, to someone with a disappointment fetish, like a threeway with Beth Ditto and Susan Boyle is to a chubby chaser who also likes terrible music. It's the ultimate.

The key to what makes them so disappointing is that they should be really, terrifyingly good. Week in, week out we watch these players in the Premier League, easily, and without bias on my part, the best league in the world. UEFA know it, that's why they had to rape Chelsea to avoid another all England Champions League final last year (you know it's true). They're great. Gerrard almost single handedly carries his team (it's easier for him since they got Spain's number one Britney Spears lookalike up front, but even before that he did a sterling job). John Terry sustains kicks to the head that would kill most people but still makes it to the party afterwards. Crouch gambols around like a happy baby giraffe that hasn't quite mastered walking yet, but still hoofs the goals in. And Rooney decimates the opposition like a big, thundering potato. They almost never suck.

But come a year that ends in an even number, it all goes the way of the pear. Obviously there will be injuries to key players. Beckham has done his Achilles, and unlike the fun we had in 2006 waiting for daily updates about the state of Rooney's metatarsal this time, we know for sure that he's out. No fourth World Cup for you, Beckham, although apparently he has been offered a job on England's "backroom staff". This being Beckham, the mind boggles as to what that job could be. Michael Owen has had so many x-rays in his career that his children will be born with ears on their foreheads and telekinetic powers, and those x-rays have revealed that his bones are made, not of glass as previously thought, but of bamboo. And Joe Cole, who is a great player and looks like a lovable gypsy urchin boy from Dickens, also seems to fuck himself up more than most. It's a rough sport, whatever those weirdos who prefer rugby might say. This shit is inevitable.

But then there's The Really Stupid Stuff That Happens Off The Pitch And Shouldn't Affect The Game But Somehow Does. Fabio Capello is not tolerant of The Really Stupid Stuff That Happens Off The Pitch And Shouldn't Affect The Game But Somehow Does. That's why he has banned the crazy, marauding band of slappers we call the WAGs from the World Cup. What a shame we won't be enjoying the pictures of their nights out, which resemble exactly the kind of cackling hen party everybody loves to see rock into Yates's... And also, what a shame they aren't all going to get to visit South Africa. Given it has a LOT of gun crime.

Capello's distaste for The Really Stupid Stuff That Happens Off The Pitch And Shouldn't Affect The Game But Somehow Does is also the reason why Rio bloody Ferdinand is going to be England captain. John Terry, who was going to be captain, given he's rather good at it at Chelsea and hasn't done a bad job for England either, fucked the wrong slag. As I understand it, it is OK, in fact pretty much compulsory for them to fuck slags, but this slag was already Wayne Bridge's slag so alas, the union was forbidden.

So Terry has had the coveted armband taken off him, and they couldn't really give it to Gerrard because he was being done for assault or something (something that happened in Liverpool anyway, I hear a drink was involved), but I suspect the real reason Rio Ferdinand was made captain was to psyche out the USA, who are also in our group. How do you put the fear of God into a team that has Landon Donovan (who I keep getting mixed up with Lando Calrissian out of Star Wars)? Give the captaincy to the player with the maddest name. John Terry isn't a very mad name at all.

Another side effect of Terry's little indiscretion is that Wayne Bridge is now refusing to play in the World Cup at all (as if he wouldn't have spent the whole time on the bench anyway while Ashley minced around in left back taking his fey throw ins). I wonder how many of the other English left backs kicking around the minor leagues have said to a mate in the pub in the last week "I'd let John Terry have a go on the missus if I could be in the World Cup. He can fucking destroy her for all I care."... That's unprofessional if you ask me. It does sort of paint a picture of John Terry as Jeff out of Peep Show, sending Wayne out to buy the condoms, which I enjoy though.

Another example of The Really Stupid Stuff That Happens Off The Pitch And Shouldn't Affect The Game But Somehow Does is of course all the stuff about Ashley and Cheryl Cole, but you know what I think about that shower of shit.

We all know what will happen. Last year we were all looking forward to it, trying to work out how many years it was since 1966 so we could make up a new version of "Three Lions on a Shirt", the only good football record ever made (what was that fucking thing by Embrace about last time? It didn't even mention England or football or any of the players and it was as dreary as fuck, Jesus, might as well have got fucking Dido to do it. Really, they want hanging for that song), but now, as usual, there's a sense that yeah, we'll go out on penalties in the quarter or semi finals as per usual.

You would think they would spend a bit more time practicing the penalty shoot outs. At club level, teams don't get into many penalty shoot outs, they only happen in the last rounds and finals of knock out tournaments, and only then if there's a draw after extra time. Chelsea have only been in about 11 in over 100 years. Liverpool practice them every single training session, but that's because they operate under the delusion that they have a god given right to be in the final of everything. But an international squad, who pretty much only play in knockout tournaments, especially one with a strong tradition of going out on penalties, well, it might be a better use of time than say, all this high school who's shagging who shit.


('’)