Their World Cup Runneth Over

With only such minor distractions as the death of yet more British soldiers in Afghanistan, more plans to lock up suspected terrorists for long periods without trial and the continuing tension between Israel and the Palestinians it is hardly surprising that the British news media should spend so much of their time analysing yet another relatively early exit from the Fifa Football World Cup by the England squad. Much of this analysis has come to the same conclusion that the BBC's quartet of pundits (Lineker, Hansen, Shearer and Wright) came to in the aftermath of the match, namely that England's woeful performances throughout the World Cup should be blamed on coach Sven Goran Eriksson, while the squad themselves should be hailed as heroes after their "Churchillian" performance(*) in defending against Portugal for over an hour after the dismissal of the ever calm and reserved Wayne Rooney.

In fact, a brief analysis of the last few weeks of punditry makes it plain that, far from failing in his duties, Eriksson has delivered to English fans exactly what they wanted. Reams of paper have been expended on the need for Eriksson's squad to show "pride", to show "heart", to show "passion", to show all of those things. in fact, that managers in the lower Coca Cola divisions exhort their teams to show just before being thrashed by Premiership opposition in the FA Cup. After years of this sort of coverage it seems the coach, being a reasonably bright man, worked out that what the English require from their footballers is not a bunch of virtuosi capable of mesmerising their opponents by their sheer mastery of the footballing arts, but rather a bunch of lads willing to run up and down the pitch until they fall to the ground exhausted. And in that he delivered absolutely perfectly.

(*) interesting choice of phrase that, especially given that the performances we remember Churchill for were given in the House of Commons, several hundred miles away from the actual field of conflict, and involved nothing more enrgetic than getting up off his arse and speaking for a bit.