After enjoying a slightly less embarrassing tournament than usual at Euro 2012 under Roy ‘Psycho’ Hodgson, the Third Best Team in International Football got everyone dreaming of World Cup glory once more by walloping Moldova 5-0 on Friday night.
However, last night’s 1-1 draw with Ukraine at Wembley has provoked nationwide wailing and gnashing of teeth at how the Third Best Team in International Football – lest we forget – could only salvage a late point despite being fairly average even when half the team aren’t sliced to pieces or puking their guts out, and with a central midfield comprised of two fading forces who everyone says played well but that’s only because one sprayed a few eye-catching passes around and the other smashed home a penalty, oh yeah and everyone knows what their names are which is more than you can say about much of the squad, and it’s not as if Ukraine are minnows, they’re a respectable international side, like a less sexy Russia, and anyone who watched Ukraine v England at the Euros will know that there’s very little between the sides, but oh no this doesn’t stop our nation’s fair media conducting a bloody post-mortem in the wake of a game that England might very well have won anyway had the likes of Tom Cleverley or Danny Welbeck put away one of the several presentable chances that came their way, and all the fans criticising Hodgson’s selections are idiots too, because it’s easy to bang on about how Welbeck should have started but also very revisionist given his previous England performances, and lacking in perspective given that he wouldn’t have had tired defenders to run rings around had he started the game, in fact we’ll say this here and now: the vast majority of football supporters don’t have the first clue what they’re talking about, NOT THE FIRST CLUE, and this wouldn’t be a problem if they humbly accepted this and presented their own ideas of what should have been done in a suitably unostentatious manner, rather than calling everyone all sorts on Twitter with the kind of language that would make your poor old mother weep if only she saw it, but oh no a bit of hearty debate is part of the game’s appeal, at least that’s what they say, as if defending their right to be wrong about things as loudly and abrasively as possible, YES WE INCLUDE YOU IN THIS, YOU THE READER, YOU ARE WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING, ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING.
Someone said: “Well, damn.”
You were unavailable for comment. Good.