I'm not in any way a football fan. I am English, but I can't find it in myself to support our over-paid under-performing team in football (or, as the Mash called it after the Slovenia game, shinball).
I did still watch the match, though mostly so I knew what people were talking about when we came back to work on Monday!
I'm glad that there will be no more of this inane football prattle and drunken louts being cretins all over the place (why is it almost all other nations have vastly more human fans than our own allegedly great nation has?).
A few things stuck me as bizarre - why were so many players out of their Premiership-winning positions? Why would you bring Heskey on (at all?) when you need goals? Why was the defending so utterly diabolical? Why were the diabolical defenders not substituted? There seemed like no game-plan (aside from using the short-corner...).
That goal being not given was obviously a blow to the English team, but as everyone has already said, England deserved to lose because they played really, really badly.
At the risk of being shot down, Tennis, Cricket, Rugby and, of course, ladies' Beach Volleyball are all far superior sports to watch (and certainly, in my experience, to play; though I've never been able to qualify for the ladies' Beach Volleyball...).
It seems to me that until the English football team gets together and used to playing with each other, until it is composed not of individuals but of team-players, and until it is managed by a long-term, committed management team who work, with the players, towards a common goal (pun fully intended), they will always only hope to make it to the last 16, rather than expecting to make it to the final and win.
But that will never happen in my lifetime. It's all driven by money, like everything else in football. Shame.
