Maybe the English players just want to go on holiday?

Thursday blog

(I’ll just leave this up for one day as it’s not terribly important)

The (multi-millionaire) football pundits have been giving us endless reasons for the English football team’s dismal performance. And the manager, the highest-paid manager at the Euros with his £5m a year, Gareth ‘Eeyore’ Southgate, a man who would be out of his depth in a puddle never mind an international football tournament, has been lavish with praise for his underperforming players: “I’m very very proud of the players. They kept composure in a game where they’ve come into it on the back of a really challenging environment. It’s taken me back to the days when I was playing with England. They’ve dealt with it really well. Composure with the ball, waiting for the opportunity. We dominated the second half.”

I’m not sure how ‘dominating the second half’ achieves anything if you don’t attack and don’t score any goals, Gareth.

Mr Southgate was clearly watching different games to the rest of us. I could only bear to watch the first half of a couple of games. What I saw was the England players maintaining over 70% of possession in the first 20 or so minutes just passing the ball rather lethargically to each other without making any attempt to attack their opponents. That England with its population of 56 million could only achieve a 0-0 draw against Slovenia with its population of 2.1 million is beyond shamefull.

I admit I know nothing about football. But I have noticed that when playing teams from countries which are rather lower down the evolutionary scale, all you need to do is get into their penalty area and they will foul you. And that gives you the chance of actually scoring a few goals.

Anyway, to get back to what might be the real reason for the English players’ plodding inactivity. I remember an interview with a leading English club manager many years ago. I think it might have been Brian Clough, but don’t quote me on that. This manager explained that when any of his players were called up to play for England, they would ask him to get them off by making excuses such as they had injury problems or family issues or whatever. They didn’t want to waste their summer holidays on some international competition when they copuld be having much more fun doing something else.

After all, you have a group of priapic young men at the height of their sexual development with their bank balances bulging with the millions they’re getting paid and their trousers bulging with you know what. They have a choice of how to spend their summer breaks – either touring the world’s nightclubs shagging any girl they want in onesomes, twosomes and threesomes or else playing even more football for some (usually third-rate) England manager.

If I was a ‘shag-everything you see’ England player, I know how I would want to spend my summer hols. I wonder if any of our great mainstream-media football pundits will ever mention this possible reason for the England players’ satisficing?

All hail, England’s tennis girls

Away from misery of watching England’s woeful, unmotivated footballers, we can see some real drive to win in England’s female tennis players. Katie Boulter, Harriet Dart and Emma Raducanu have been wonderful to watch. Perhaps England’s underperforming footballers could learn something from these three girls on how to fight to win?