Sunday, June 27, 2010

11 times and counting

So there we go, no surprises - Germany 4 England 1. England for about 10 minutes looked like they were vaguely interested till the dis-allowed goal. I can't comment on strategies, it's not my game but to me it looked as though when the Germans had the ball they had an extra 3 or 4 players, there was always a good 2 or 3 blokes in wide open spaces for whoever had the ball to pass to. Whereas England always seemed to be forced to pass to a player who had a German right on his shoulder or directly in front of him. To the uninitiated it looked to me that when England had the ball all the English players were (as we used to say) marked. Then when the Germans had the ball virtually all their players were running into spaces into which they would launch their next attack, whilst the English players were too busy thinking about their next male grooming product contract or were too knackered from playing last week.

So, 11 times now on the trott we've not won the world cup. It strikes me that we celebrate idiocy - Big Brother, almost every program on C4 that may have been called yoof tv, x-factor and all those kinds of programs. All kinds of people get paid shed loads of money for doing nothing, fame and celebrity status is the most sought after status in life irrespective of what it is that you do. Even in industry and commerce people are paid enormous bonuses for over-seeing catastrophies having been allowed to write in clauses to their contracts almost as if they know they're going to fail. We do look like a country of total losers on so many front, but there are glimmers of hope....

I've avoided the news so far, so I don't know how we've done against the Aussies today, hopefully there's going to be continuing good news which bodes well for the Ashes in December. Meanwhile Andy Murray is still in the running at Wimbledon and as a nation we're still the leaders in most cycling events. It strikes me that fame and ridiculous wealth only serves to corrupt and ruin things that were once quite magic and real.