L'Ombre de l'Olivier

The Shadow of the Olive Tree

being the maunderings of an Englishman on the Côte d'Azur

15 June 2006 Blog Home : June 2006 : Permalink

The Politics of Football

Many of the Scotch seem to have decided that they wanted to see the sassenachs humbled by plucky Trinidad & Tobago. Although I think that the Wapping Liar missed a great moment for anti-Scotch stereotyping when it reported that:

A number of bars and pubs are also running promotions such as free drinks when England concedes a goal.

This was clearly the canny Scotch reputation for penny-pinching generous gestures at work and no doubt may of the publicans involved were praying to any deity they could for a robust English defense. Harry's Place writer Wardytron draws another conclusion:

If one wanted to be cruel - which of course one doesn't - one might suggest that this kind of behaviour, somewhat lacking as it is in magnanimity, hinted at an inferiority complex, or that it was a poor substitute for actually being at a World Cup. Not me though - I'm happy for people to support whoever they want, and think it's ridiculous that Scottish politicians should feel obliged to support England. But perhaps in future, in order to avoid all these petty arguments and give them someone they can all support, maybe the Scots should form a football team of their own so that they can enjoy the World Cup like everyone else.

Still (HT Jane Galt) football fever clearly showed Tony Blair's priorities and, one has to say gained him rare approval from me:

BRITISH representatives in Brussels spent the evening before the European-Union summit (held on Thursday June 15th and on Friday) rigging up a television room so Tony Blair, Britain’s prime minister, could watch England take on Trinidad and Tobago in the World Cup. That interested him more than talk about the constitution, which the rest of the summiteers were scheduled to discuss at the same time.

Even though it has to be said that England would probably be better server by Tone going into that meeting and making it clear that the EU constitution should be canned permenantly along wth most of the accompanying EU commission power grabs.

As for the game itself, it ended with a scoreline somewhat flattering to England, as they spent the first half doing nothing constructove and hundreds of scottish publicans were only saved from having to pay for rounds of drinks due to a great Terry save. In the second half England picked up the pace a bit but things only really started humming when Rooney and Lennon came on to replace Owen and wossname. It seemed to me that Rooney acted as a great piece of misidrection because he seemed to get surrounded by TT defenders leaving space for others, although the few touches he did get also made clear why you pay extra attention to him. Still as dissidentdave reported at the Marmot's Hole, it still took them about 20 minutes to turn the extra pace and freedom into an actual goal and it was only in injury time that the second goal was added to make things really safe.

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