Sunday 17th June
The football of course – what else? It feels so strange; England are at a major tournament and yet there are no flags out anywhere, well, hardly any. Why is that? Is it because of the Jubilee, and we are all flagged out? Is it that we really do not care? Or is it because our expectations are so low that not even the most fervent fans give us a hope in hell of winning the thing? I suspect the latter, though why this should be I am really not sure. True we no longer have Beckham, but then the Beckham we all remember of ten or twelve years ago was never actually that wonderful when we got to the tournament stage anyway. And the supposedly golden generation of Michael Owen, Rio Ferdinand etc: was largely puffed up by the press to make us all for a moment or two believe we were the equals of Germany or France or Italy, to say nothing of Argentina and Brazil, and now we have Spain to contend with too.
So, two games down and what do we think; that we are lucky to have four points, or that actually we may not be quite as bad as we at first thought. After the Fabio fiasco, and the John Terry racism stuff and then the appointment of boring old Roy Hodgson most of us must have thought what small chance we had must have gone, but the players are still there, well – those that aren’t injured are anyway, and next match Wonderboy Wayne Rooney will be back, so it can’t be all that bad, can it? Well no, except when you watch them play, and all of us know that when the opposition, even Sweden, get the ball and start to attack, we fear another stupid defensive error and another goal. This was exemplified by the last game against Sweden. We went one goal up, and you just knew it wouldn’t last. It didn’t, two free-kicks and Sweden were in the lead, and every Englishman knew it was over. But then, by some miracle it wasn’t. So, lucky or not, we are exactly where we should be going into the last game. Only Ukraine to beat, or at least draw against, surely we won’t lose against them. Well with England anything is possible; except, of course, winning the damned thing. That would be plain ridiculous…but you never know.