I have a confession to make, that I fear will make me very unpopular….I’m NOT a fan of the England football team. When the rest of the country hangs out the flags and cheers on the boys I prefer to go and lie down in a darkened room with a good book and a cup of tea. I tend to view England the same way people view a painful rash: an annoying irritant, that you can eventually get rid of.
I can’t explain why the England team annoys me. It could be the way the media over-react to every result.It could be the fans with their sun-burnt beer bellies, belching out chorus after chorus of IN-GER-LAND over and over. It could be the horrific rendition of The Great Escape theme that seems to follow the team around wherever they play.
Or it could be the fact that the entire team is a bunch of over-paid, over-indulged, preening lot of useless prima-donnas, half of whom are distinctly average yet get called up to represent their national side because of one good game in the reserves!
For years I thought I was the only one who was distinctly unimpressed with the boys in the Three Lions jersey. Every World Cup or Euro would see my normally perfectly sane friends turn into England-shirt wearing zombies who would bellow and moan like drunken cows at a wedding party, whenever Beckham booted the ball out of play.
Now before somebody starts commenting below with something along the lines of ‘You’re not English Den Mate’ or Why don’t you go back to that place where de Germans come from??’ I ask you to stop a moment. According to a poll taken by Zoo magazine, it appears that I’m not the only one who isn’t that keen on the England team.
Zoo asked 1000 proper football fans what they thought about various aspects of our national pastime. Then, like all good magazines, they printed the results, which make for some very interesting reading.
Do you think the next England manager should be English?
Yes – 54%
No – 46%
The impression that many people abroad have of the English is that we won’t be happy until we have a manager who was born in our green and pleasant land, lead us to victory in the World Cup final against the Germans. But a surprisingly high percentage of fans would actually be happy with a foreign manager at the helm. It would appear that a significant number of fans have been impressed by the work of men like Sven Goran Erikson and Fabio Capello.
To be honest, that statistic shouldn’t come as a surprise. I’m a 23 year old male, and I fall right into Zoo’s demographic. Yet the last ‘English’ England manager I can remember is Kevin Keegan. Before him it was Glenn Hoddle, and if I concentrate really hard I can picture Terry Venables gritting his teeth as Southgate stepped up to take THAT penalty. But Erikson was the manager of my youth, when I was old enough to appreciate what was going on on the pitch, instead of what my dad was screaming at the telly. So really, to me it doesn’t matter where the next England manager comes from.
Who Do You Want The Next England Manager to Be?
Harry Redknapp – 53%
Jose Mourinho – 18%
Guus Hiddink – 9%
Roy Hodgson – 7%
Other – 6%
Martin O’Neill – 4%
Sam Allardyce – 3%
Whilst the first statistic could be labelled ‘too close to call’, the second one on the list was pretty clear-cut. In terms of WHO we English want to manage our national team, the clear winner is Harry Redknapp. That’s a staggering 581 people out of 1000 who voted for ‘Arry.
Redknapp’s Tottenham are currently riding high in the league, and they’ve pulled off a few great results this season. Added to this is the fact that our ‘Arry is one of the most charismatic managers in the league, and is the typical ‘every manager’.
The statistics also show that there is a sizeable majority of English football fans who hold a candle for Jose Mourinho. He came a distant second to Redknapp, but faced no real challenge from the rest of the field. The mysterious and seldom seen other football manager A.N Other received 6% – more than O’Neill and Allardyce, which says something about what we think of them.
Would You Rather…
Your Team Won The League – 82%
England Won Euro 2012 – 18%
Would You Like To See a Better National Side, at the Expense of League Quality?
Yes – 23%
No – 77%
So, what do these damned statistics tell us? Do they show that we have fallen out of love with our national side? I believe they do. We all want to see England win, that’s why we spend bucketloads of money buying flags, shirts and pints in the misguided belief that if we all pull together the team will get over the fact that they’re actually not that good, and go all the way to the final.
But, we’re not that bothered what happens in the mean time. In fact, we’d all much rather watch the Premiership. The sort of England fan featured in Mars or McDonald’s adverts saying some pseudo-poetic nonsense like ‘I will watch England through extra-time and penalties,’ doesn’t really exist. It’s a creation of the advertising executives, like the Duracel Bunny.
But then…what do I know? I’m just a bitter Slovakian.
Follow me on Twitter @petermagpie
