I watched England getting beaten again the other night. Knocked out of some apparently important competition by some theoretically puny middle European side. All the fans cried. The papers the next day ranted about the tragedy for British football. The manager, of course, got sacked.
Why on earth is anyone surprised we lost? The last time we were a footballing powerhouse of a nation was last century. Arguably 1966. I don't watch much football, because why would I? We always lose. The whole history of football fandom reeks of sadness.
It's simple. The best league teams in England are packed with international stars who aren't eligible to play for our national team. Several of our national team players even struggle to get into their own club teams. The whole idea of the English club scene being English is a total sham. So long as this situation persists, so long as we value foreign players above our own, so long as we have this delusion we can punch way above our weight, we are just going to go on and on losing, and crying when we lose.
Let's get it straight. We're not good at football on the international scene. Not good enough. Please, you fans, do and do something else with your time. I can't bear to see you wasting your lives like this.
I suggest you go and watch rugby. They may be thugs, but they're astonishingly brave thugs. You don't see them rolling around on the ground when someone taps them on the shin. And they have stronger characters too. There's little history of rugby crowd violence. You don't hear about them being idiots in nightclubs, taking too many recreational drugs, squandering their money on mindlessly expensive cars, abusing women in hotel rooms.
They even win sometimes. Wouldn't that be nice?
Lenny Johnson - Culture Warrior, General Groover, and Lover of the Peaceful Way.
Source: www.articlesphere.com