The European Championships is once again approaching fast so we should all expect the country to be taken over by plastic flags bearing the St. George Cross attached to car windows, women and children donning the England shirt from the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and topless, tattooed men bellowing out a, not too accurate but passionate all the same, rendition of ‘God Save the Queen’ painted in red and white whilst fumbling a can of Carlsberg Special Brew.
This will undoubtedly be swiftly followed by fans calling for whichever referee happens to doom England’s hopes’ head again, and probably an international warrant for arrest for whichever player who plies their trade in the Premiership ruins our chances of glory on the continental stage, again.
Don’t you just love the inevitability of England at competitive tournaments?
I can say, without reasonable doubt, that in the weeks before the tournament the nation’s football fans will once again over-hype England’s chances of actually attaining international honours for the first time since 1966, as they always do. As a result of this, there’ll be a huge fallout when England fail to deliver their astronomical expectations.
Before you ask, no, I’m not writing this because I don’t want England to do well, quite the opposite in fact, I just wish we, as supporters of our country, would have more realistic expectations.
The England squad is looking fairly bare of international superstars at the moment, and save magic from youngsters like Daniel Sturridge and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, surely we shouldn’t expect them to get past the quarter finals again, after all, England are a perennial quarter final team. More often than not, make it here, but barely ever make it past them.
Admittedly, we’ve got possibly one of he most exciting goalkeeping talents since Peter Shilton in Joe Hart, but one man does not a team maketh, or something like that, especially a goalkeeper.
England are going to have to look to the experienced heads of the team, such as Frank Lampard and John Terry to deliver on the international stage where they have failed so often before, and hope that the absence of possibly their biggest threat, Wayne Rooney, doesn’t hurt them too much in the opening 2 games.
The managing position is another worrying aspect. It’s looking more and more likely every day that Stuart Pearce will be leading the Three Lions into Euro 2012, which in itself doesn’t inspire confidence with his not so impressive record at Man City, and appalling campaign in the U21 Euro Championships last summer. If not though, any new manager will have a very limited amount of time to get used to the role, get to know the players and work out a system how they should play, this is down to poor decision making by the FA if you ask me.
Hopefully as a team they’ll stand up and be counted for once, and maybe, just maybe my damning prophecy won’t be foretold, although I can’t really see any other outcome.
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In your first paragraph you have slated fans? I’m sure the people you have described and making out to be scum are probably just passionate about own country!
I haven’t called them scum once. Also, I thought it was fairly well implied that it was a tongue in cheek introduction, take it with a pinch of salt.