Club before country
FRANK KEATING Widespread focus of national passions on the conclusion of Lewis Hamilton's dash for the chequered flag on the Formula One racetrack and rugby's compelling World Cup muted much of England's hostile recriminations over its inept football team's almost certain elimination from the 2008 European championship. The diversions, however, only delayed the deluge of derision, and the buckets of whitewash will be teetering for some time yet on every doorframe lintel of the Football Association's swish Soho offices. England are doomed unless Russia lose their last two group matches against a weak Israel and even weaker Andorra next month. From his uneasy understudy's Act 1, Scene 1 entrance on to the blasted heath, England's crabby manager Steve McClaren was perfectly cast for the tragedian's leading role, and while any number of his early decisions and selections were scattily off-beam, at the last it is his sulky, uninspired players who should shoulder most of the blame. Fat chance.
Club before country has long been the norm in English football. Unlike (so far) cricket and rugby, the fundamental loyalties of England's footballers — less to do with badge than bank balance — are to their clubs, their principal overpampering and overgenerous paymasters. To be sure, you doubt elimination has scarcely ruffled the pride of England's players — heck, on the contrary, it means a nice free summer in the beach-bars with their Wags (and they probably deserve that, too, in fairness) — but it will, for sure, exacerbate the foaming oneeyed jingo of their supporters should a gallant and hitherto unconsidered Scots team manage to qualify with a victory over Italy in their final group game on 17 November (or a draw, followed by the defeat of France in the Ukraine four days later). That would really be something. Mind you, if Scotland fail, it will be the first European tournament without a British team since 1984. Brand new England manager then was Bobby Robson: like McClaren now, it was his first competition. Back then, Robson was heartily backed to stay — and he did, on the whole successfully, even with a flourish. Almost a quarter of a century on, and different days, crueller times — and now the jackals are vengefully hunting down their man. No escape. Even as they went through the formal curtseying preliminaries of backing McClaren last week, an FA chap wincingly added that the cost of elimination could reach 'up to a billion' in lost sponsorship.
It is the presumption that boggles, the presumption that England should qualify for every tournament it enters. A sober glance at the way of the world — the footballing rise of the eastern European states, the east itself, certainly Africa — and it looks a reasonable bet to me that no British national team will ever again qualify for a major tournament. Remember how England and its hysterical flag-wavers were utterly convinced they'd win the World Cup only last year? The two fellows who led that puffed-up parade of conceit were David Beckham (now vanished into the hot air and pink steam of the Hollywood All-Stars) and another half-comic celeb-creation, crispsuited sexpot Swede Sven-Goran Eriksson.
But what's this? No longer Rory Bremner on a good night, Sweden's finest is resurrected as maestro of the touchline, deity of the dugout — and this very weekend the Premiership's seminally crucial lop-table clashes' match Liverpool with Arsenal, and Chelsea, can you believe it, with Sven's rapturously reborn Manchester City? Bags this col be first to cry: 'Come back, Svennis, all is forgiven.'
Previous page