BALLS! The Best European Football Nations
This is an extract from the ebook 'BALLS! The Best European Football Nations', an irreverent and informative look at the history of the sixteen teams represented at the 2012 UEFA European Football Championships in Poland and Ukraine.
World Cup Appearances: 13
World Cup Best: Winners - 1966
Euros Best: Semi Final - 1968, 1996
The England team is a Charles Dickens novel and a midwife undertaking industrial action, all rolled into one, engendering great expectations but delivering nothing. With the notable exception of Wembley 1966 - those halcyon times when World Cup Willie was a mascot rather than a quick shag during extra-time - there is an unwavering history of failure and under-achievement for those playing under the flag of St George. On the other hand, is it under-achievement? Perhaps it is fairer to evaluate the mindset of the typical English fan as one so dripping in delusion, it feeds a very unreasonable expectation that their team will triumph. Thus, when the substitute winger with cramp in both calves sends his penalty into earth orbit to lose the game and seal elimination from the tournament, the fan reacts like a spurned lover, full of anger, hurt, betrayal, piss and vinegar.
There might be one or two Scots who are now dribbling porridge oats down their fronts, as they punch the air with joy on reading this, but to provide some balance and crush the sporran a little bit, England are consistently one of the top ten sides in the FIFA rankings. They are a very good team with very good players, and so it is not quite the same as the merry fans of San Marino thinking that the 11-0 reversal to the Netherlands is the turning point, and they are destined to go on and ultimately be crowned champions of Europe. The English players apply their trade in the highest quality, most competitive domestic league in the world, which must equip them with the skills and experience needed to deal with the technical and psychological demands of international football. Yet success remains as far away for England as Pluto is from Uranus... and that’s a Disney cartoon I’d like to see. So why is the England team, perennial failures? Why do the fans live on Cloud Nine? The answer is rooted in a combination of colonialism and shouting.
Britannia did once rule the waves. It was when Great Britain was at the forefront of the industrial revolution, and inventions such as the steamship, the telegraph and, to a lesser extent, inflatable trousers, paved the way for the creation of a global empire that, at its peak, ruled one fifth of the world’s population and covered one quarter of the land on earth. From the beginning of the nineteenth century up until 1914, the country was the world’s super power, and its ruling classes developed an unshakeable attitude of superiority as an inevitable consequence of this dominance. Humility and subservience were not the defining characteristics of the British, unless you were working class, in which case they were your only characteristics, apart from a tendency to stink of shit. Yet by the end of the Second World War, the battered and bruised Britannia that emerged was effectively bankrupt, though fortunately, America offered a mortgage with Sir Laurence Olivier as collateral. The world order changed, the USA assumed the mantle of global supremacy, and the Home Nations could only gorge on humble pie.
The English soccer authorities, full of self-importance for having invented Association Football, adopted these imperialist attitudes of pre-eminence and treated overseas teams and tournaments as something to wipe off their brogues. Although England joined FIFA in 1908, the FA’s relations with football’s world governing body were always a bit strained. They resigned in 1928, thereby missing the first three World Cups.
England did not enter the World Cup competition until 1950 after rejoining FIFA, twenty years after its inaugural event, and they came late to the European Championship party, not appearing until 1968. In the same vein, most English club sides initially refused to enter European club competitions for it not being in the best interests of British football to indulge Johnny Foreigner. Inevitably, this impeded the development of British football so that, even today, it lags behind 'lesser' nations in terms of technical and tactical prowess.
So what about the poor, traditional England supporter, tarred with the same brush of pre-disposed superiority? Well, it is not easy for this fan. In addition to his - I use the male gender as he is more susceptible - questionable DNA inheritance, he struggles to string two words together, has a compulsion to paint the flag of St George on his face, and has to self-manage an involuntary aggression commensurate with that of a pit bull terrier fed on live rats. It all leads to an unquestioning faith in the ability of his team’s country to conquer all. In some ways, it is a shame, because it always ends in disappointment.
Yet it is not just about these old colonial influences, which have proved as difficult to shake off as a square inch of cling film from your bottom. The other thing that differentiates the English in terms of developing of young football talent is the shouting. Have a look at this traditional job specification for a junior football coach in England:
Ability to shout very loud
Ability to shout extremely loud
That’s about it. If you want to hear some high volume yelling, your top three choices are to go to the Town Crier of the Year Contest, visit my Aunt Lil’s neighbours - who make John & Mary from Father Ted seem like love’s young dream - or attend to any junior football game. At the latter, you will hear a cacophony of bawling from the manager, his assistant with a personality disorder, and a collection of dads and the odd mum. There are so many of these deluded parents who see their child as the next Wayne Rooney, even if the only chance for the young'un to emulate the England striker will be in ten years time when he shacks up for the night with Old Margie from Birkenhead’s red light district.
To be fair, things may be very different in the world of girls’ football, which has shown a rapid expansion in the last decade, something that has to be a good thing. But my musings are based on the boys’ game, including my own experiences playing as a teenager, my traipsing around the football fields of the Wirral to watch my youngest son play, and my current observations from taking the dogs for a run and a crap around the local park.
To my eyes, not a lot has changed in the last forty years at the grass roots level. It is still beyond the comprehension of the average English coach of young teams to adopt an approach based on the children simply having a good time. I watch in resigned despair, as I see eight year old lads stretching their hamstrings at the start of training, running around the field for a couple of laps, before listening to a lecture on the effectiveness of the 4-4-1-1 formation in the modern game, particularly when combined with remote controlled electric shock treatment for misplaced passes and goals conceded. Finally, for the final five minutes of the session, someone finds a ball to practice kicking it as high and as far as possible.
Then there is the assumption that these youngsters ought to have the testosterone driven aggression of a Ron ‘Chopper’ Harris’, Norman Hunter, Roy Keane and Nigel de Jong, even though they still believe in Father Christmas. Before the onset of puberty, it is simply not normal for young boys to act like Stuart Pearce in the presence of raw flesh. Other nations have recognised this, coaching young players with an emphasis on enjoyment, ball skills and diving. We could learn so much from our fellow Europeans, or even Tom Daley.
It is no surprise that as a consequence of this shouting and the combative coaching, young English players who make it to the professional level tend to big hearted, full of fight and passion, but technically inferior. Pundits and phone-in addicts, bemoaning the number of 'foreigners' in the leagues, miss the point on two levels. Firstly, they are there because they are better. And secondly, in the long-term, this is a good thing for the game. Kids copy what they see on TV and at matches. If their role model is Luis Suarez or Carlos Tevez, then... whoops, I think I have just turned down a cul-de-sac. But you get my drift, don’t you?
I said 'poor' England fan for a reason. He is a product of his legacy and has had to endure much suffering in the arena of international football. When the result came through that England had lost 1-0 to the USA in the 1950 World Cup, there was general disbelief. Most people assumed that George Formby or Mr Pastry - younger readers will think this is the CEO of Greggs - had telegraphed the result and missed the ‘1’ in front of England's ‘0’. The Americans were soccer virgins, their leather balls unmolested, and their squad patched together like Charlie Chaplin's trousers, including a goalkeeper who played baseball and drove a hearse, though presumably not at the same time. The dismay of the English fans at this result was understandable, although there was a supreme irony in the reaction to this ‘humiliation’. The well-oiled British propaganda machine had always played down the importance of America in bringing World War II to a end and bankrolling the country when it was on ‘the bones of its arse’ (copyright Harry Redknapp) in 1945.
If the USA score had been a wake up call, the games against Hungary in the early 1950s were the four-minute warning. In 1953, the geniuses of Puskas and Hidegkuti overran England and ran out 6-3 winners, the first ever loss at Wembley. The FA considered this a one-off, anticipating a resumption of the natural order after the return match in Budapest, the following year. The team lost this game 7-1, which is still England's worst ever result. The English centre back Syd Owen - not the Eastender's actor, though he might have done a better job - said 'It was like playing people from outer space'.
In the 1954 World Cup, England did better, their task helped by the availability of the great Sir Stanley Matthews, then a sprightly eighty-six year old, and by the bizarre system where they only had to play two teams in their group of four, thereby avoiding twice world champions and seeded team, Italy. The English topped their group after a 1-0 win against their Swiss hosts to progress to the quarter-finals, where they lost 4-2 to the reigning world champions, Uruguay.
Four years’ later in Sweden, England was in a tough group with Brazil, USSR and Austria. The Munich Air Crash in February of that year had weakened the English squad and the team could only draw all three of its group games, including a scoreless game against the Brazilians, the first ever game in World Cup history to end without any goals. If a young Pele had not been a substitute that day, the result may have been different. The English then had to play USSR in a play-off for the quarter-finals, which they lost 1-0.
In Chile 1962, a 3-1 win over Argentina was enough to earn a last eight encounter with Brazil. The England team included a few names soon to be legends including Bobby Moore and Bobby Charlton, but the South Americans had Garrincha, playing at his peak, and he scored two goals to help his team to a 3-1 victory and send Walter Winterbottom’s men home.
Click below to read more about Alf Ramsey, 1966 and all that...
Copyright 2012 Chris Whitfield
Extract from the book 'BALLS! The Best European Football Nations',
http://www.chimpsindung.co.uk/balls.html
