mcshane in the 79th
New member
- Nov 4, 2005
- 10,485
Apologies if fixtures.
http://www.football365.co.uk/john_nicholson/0,17033,8746_6235501,00.html
http://www.football365.co.uk/john_nicholson/0,17033,8746_6235501,00.html
The worst thing about an England tournament exit is the fall-out; the phone-ins with idiot fans, the tabloid hyperbole, the pundits with easy solutions and the inevitable sacking of the manager.
This is the noise of what I call Ingerland; the noise of people who expected too much based on nothing other than their own myriad delusions, false assumptions and insane expectations.
The more rational, perceptive voice of England fans gets drowned out in the all this bluster.
Ingerland fans are full of rubbish. To these people it is always the players who were not picked that would have provided the solution. If only Darren Bent had been selected, or Theo Walcott or whoever, they would have turned things around. One caller to 606 offers the argument that Liverpool won five trophies when Peter Crouch played for them as proof of why Crouch should have played from the start. He's totally sure. Pity that it's not true.
England fans know that just picking another couple of players who are inculcated into the same football culture, the same youth training, with the same attitude, will not help. England fans know a revolution from the grassroots upwards is what is required, not just shuffling the chairs on the deck of a Titanic.
But the bellicose howling of Ingerland is now in full flow with fans shouting about Capello being foreign. That's always the problem to Ingerland fans - "get 'Arry in" says one Ingerland blow-hard, "he's proper English".
Proper. English.
Ingerland doesn't like foreign. Indeed, to the Ingerland man, it's the foreigners who are to blame for pretty much everything.
England fans know this is spurious nonsense, not least because the results under English managers have been no better. Our best-ever run of form was under Sven. Ingerland has forgotten this and chooses only to remember the tabloid portrayal of him as a funny foreigner who was a loser.
England fans know that it's not the management that is the problem, it's everything else.
Another furious Ingerlander comes on and pulls out his killer analysis: "You need someone with a bit of passion." And he goes on to say, "I'm very nationalistic about my country," - comically unaware of the tautology. As yes, passion; that's what is always missing. Passion is the most over-used word in football.
England fans are all too aware that people who talk like this are part of the problem, not the solution. Passion, whatever that might mean and however it might manifest itself, is irrelevant without tactically flexibility, technique and mental strength. Just caring more doesn't help if you haven't the technique to pass the ball accurately under pressure.
But Ingerland isn't done yet: "They let down the whole country," he says.
England's more rational voices wonder how this could be the case when they have no track record of success in tournaments, indeed last 16 or eight or non-qualification is what has happened for 44 years with only one exception in 1990. So they're not letting anyone down, they are performing to par.
England fans know it's unfair to expect something which cannot be delivered and equally unfair to then berate those who were palpably unable to deliver it for their inadequacies. England's more rational fans wonder why so many Ingerlanders invest so much in these mere mortals to the extent that they seem to talk about them as if they know them personally; as though it's a member of their own family.
"Why can't they play like they do for their clubs?" wails another Ingerland caller, seemingly unaware of the difference between international football and club football. At their clubs they are in familiar surroundings, play 50% of their games in front of loyal supporters, they know how their team-mates play and those team-mates are often better than their England team-mates.
But crucially, above all that, they are playing quite poor sides half of the time. They play well against Wigan or Burnley and receive the unreasoned adulation of Ingerland fans for doing so, ignoring the fact that these players regularly make the same mistakes that they make in an England shirt but are punished by the opposition for it far less.
England fans know that this behaviour is totally over the top but their voices of caution are all too often painted by Ingerland as unpatriotic or simply stupid. Maybe we don't have enough passion?
The leap from club football to international tournament is clearly a vast gulf which time and again we cannot cross, not least because Ingerland fans heap pressure and expectation on the players to do so.
Another Ingerland fan drags out a favourite cliché calling them 'overpaid prima donnas' and wants the government to cut their wages, stunningly unaware that they are not public sector workers. He just seems to want to punish them; to hurt them.
England fans know that it matters not how much you're paid, if you're not able to play less rigid, inflexible football from an early age; if you can't control a ball with one touch, if you are caught out of position and are too slow to compete, you are going to end up losing. Making them poorer won't change that.
After every tournament failure we hear the full cry of Ingerland eagerly looking for scapegoats, wanting to wipe the past clean and start again, wanting a silver bullet to make it all better. The domination of Ingerland fans and the Ingerland press who feed them at times like this are all part of the England problem. Their bluster and ignorance puts up a smokescreen and obfuscates more rational, intelligent debate and thought.
I genuinely believe most England fans know what the basic problems are and how they might be solved in the long term, the trouble is it's the voices of Ingerland who all too often gear and drive the authorities' decisions. Ingerland says it is the carrier of the flame of Olde Albion. It is the only one who really cares and many in authority believe them or are too scared to take them on.
In short, Ingerland is killing England.
