Infant Land

England is like a country of five year olds screaming ‘I want, I want’.

Witness the transformation of the football team from a middling outfit who would make the quarter finals at best to a team now so expected to win the whole thing that it’s taken for granted that a small, apparently insignificant country like Croatia will be easily beaten.

It’s the familiar mentality of another instance of public mass hysteria of: “I want it, I think I’m entitled to it and think that if I believe in it hard enough then I’ll get it, no matter the practicalities and realities” (in the case of England that they’re indulging players who aren’t performing).

It’s also getting like Brexit in the way that anyone who presents a rational view based on the evidence (England have played some mediocre, cautious football, have had an exceptionally favourable draw and have been saved from elimination by the goalkeeper in at least one match, if not two) that it won’t be all straightforward is viewed as a heretic whose views will in some bizarre way undermine the team’s performance in Moscow.

I certainly want England to win — I’ve been to Wembley to watch them enough times (I think I saw Lingard’s debut) — but if they do I’m going to despair of the amateur part-time fan bullshit merchants in the media and elsewhere churning out unrealistic ra-ra hype for the next four days.

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