The Beautiful Game

Sorry, it can't be left alone just yet.

We had to leave the house yesterday before the match was over and so Kevin was trying to find out the score on the car radio all the way to Kitsilano. Without success. We didn't find out that England had lost to Portugal on penalties until on our way back, trying to find another place, Kevin missed the turning from shock when we did hear the result.

There is a certain language associated with football. It really hadn't occurred to me that the word 'nil' was part of that language. Kevin told me that the people at work had been commenting on a 'nil, nil score.' We just take for granted ... and I guess he meant 'the lads at work'.
But one of those expressions is what I ended my blog with yesterday, 'we was robbed.' Gamesmanship is everything to the British.

I should take my own advice, it isn't cricket to quote from your friends' e-mails without asking them, but I'm working on the basis that Simmi and I know each other well enough to be able to shortcut that. I was asking my son Ben what had happened and read him out Simmi's comments and he said,
'Yep, that's what happened.'

Now to understand this you need to know, as did I, that Wayne Rooney is England's demi-god and he plays for Manchester United, as does Portugal's Cristiano Ronaldo.
The supposed foul was an accident when Rooney - in Ben's words - 'accidentally stood on Carvalho's bollocks when he was on the ground.'

From our reporter in the field...
"I cannot even begin to describe the scenes from ************ during today's football... My voice is SO hoarse I sound like a pre-pubescent boy and my heart is broken... Christiano Ronaldo has now ruined it for me ............... He ran to the ref and actively got his 'Club-mate' (Rooney) sent off.... SHAME...."
"My Grandfather always used to say that "Football was a game for Gentlemen played by Yobs and Rugby is a game for Yobs played by Gentlemen"... (rugby was his Love by the way!)
Ronaldo personified and typified everything that has gone wrong with the game I love and adore..... The beautiful game...
All ruined by a cheat.. I can turn a blind eye to the diving, all teams are guilty of that.... But running to the Ref and screaming for a Red Card, knowing you have to play on the same team as that person next season, is filth... Especially when afterwards you "Wink" to the rest of your team in that, "Ok Lads, job done"

That about sums up what probably most Brits would feel, whether they follow footie or not - like myself, you must PLAY THE GAME. Ok, sure, we would ALWAYS say 'we was robbed', and as far as I can see, no-one's even claiming that England would have won had Rooney not been sent off, but the thing that rankles is the unsportsmanlike behaviour, it colours everything for us, and notice here I say 'for Brits', not 'the English'.

And on that exact same theme, I just want to quote Gary Neville, a man whom I must admit I'd never heard of until today's Observer article, but who is apparently also an important England player and what he says here is also straight down the line, and shows not just the way Brits react, but the way we actually think,

"Gary Neville, who wore the captain's armband after Beckham went off, admitted England were poor for much of the match. 'For England and the expectations of England, and for the people and for ourselves, it is not good enough. I wouldn't want to use anything as an excuse,' he said."

So, it seems that Sven's swansong was a little ignominious, and the article points out that most likely it's also Beckham's last game for England. A few interesting stats at the end tell us that
"16 Number of hours German police officers in Dachau spent learning useful phrases in English for dealing with England fans, such as 'you are under arrest' and 'I need to search you'.

50,000 Number of two-and-a-half pint glasses in the shape of the World Cup trophy bought at Tesco in the past three weeks. 'The most patriotic place seems to be Tunbridge Wells,' says a spokesman."

Tunbridge Wells, who'd have thought it?