Somewhere That Is Forever England: And rather better than the football

The St George flags have been taken down. Like a period of official mourning, the flags have not just been lowered, they have been interred, along with the dead body of English football.

Everyone and his dog and mistress has had his or her say. So why shouldn’t I be any different? England’s misfortune may not directly have anything to do with the little part of Mallorca that is forever Albion, but it is still England, our England – transplanted in the Mediterranean, where the arrests mounted and the odd pisshead went on the prowl for some retribution. How little one has to be proud of.

Everyone and his dog and mistress has his or her theory as to the reasons for England going belly-up – on a grand scale, the size of many a belly wobbling with many a Saint Mick in the sun of Mallorca. Perhaps we should toss in the alignment of the planets, as Ted Dexter once madly referred to when a different England team was succumbing horribly.

After England were dumped out of the last World Cup, Graham Taylor, not someone necessarily associated with Pele’s “beautiful game”, said that England would never win a tournament while the players lacked the technique and nous to compete with others – Portugal then, Germany now. He was merely echoing what has been said for some 50 or more years. If you go back to the 1950s, England were soundly thrashed not once but twice by the Hungarians. Players who participated in those drubbings included famous names of English football – Matthews, Mortensen, Finney, Wright. The team was still wedded to the WM system, one invented by Arsenal in the 1920s. The navel-gazing that followed the conceding of 13 goals in two matches focused on the system and on technique. Both were badly lacking. There is nothing new under a Mallorcan or a South African sun, and as we have come to appreciate over the years, 1966 was an aberration, an apparent injustice, for which the Germans now have goal-line redemption.

During that last World Cup, I happened to stumble across a soccer game on Spanish television that wasn’t from the World Cup. It was a tournament being played in Mallorca. The play was vibrant, with movement, pace and passing. Everything was pretty much to feet; it was a joy to watch. The players were 12 years old. It was a tournament featuring junior German and Spanish teams, playing on a scaled-down pitch, not a full-size one.

Germany, for years a dominant force in world football, had slumped so much that at the 2000 European championship they were even worse than Keegan’s England. They had a re-think, a proper re-think. The structure of the game in Germany is such that most Bundesliga sides play in a similar fashion, and the reason lies in the co-ordinated efforts of the Bundesliga and the German football association, together with a programme that has provided thousands more coaches than exist in England. It has also provided Joachim Löw who was the coaching brains behind Jürgen Klinsmann before he got the top job himself.

That class of 2006 and its Spanish counterpart was representative of a coaching style that is only now starting to be realised in England. The FA reckons its under-17s are outstanding. Perhaps so, but unlike with the Bundesliga, how many will get the opportunity to shine in the Premier League? Again, it all has to do with the structure of the sport.

To hear Chris Waddle on Five Live after the match was to listen to someone who was angry beyond anything one has ever heard from a “pundit”. Waddle may not have been much of a manager, but he was a hell of a player. He was widely attributed as having been the driving force behind getting Bobby Robson to change England’s style in 1990, one that perhaps should have won the tournament with a side blessed with greater talent (Lineker, Beardsley, Gascoigne, Shilton) than the so-called golden generation. Waddle was apoplectic, laying into the FA, into technique, into coaching and systems.

Waddle also played abroad, thus broadening his mind. And broad minds are not what one thinks of with the likes of Potato Head. Waddle’s fellow mullet wearer and partner in Diamond Lights crime, Glenn Hoddle, was another expat in France. Hoddle, had he not been as batty as Ted Dexter (battier in fact), might just have proven to be the England manager who changed things for the better. He was an advocate of the joined-up system that the Germans now have and which is a contemporary version of what propelled the Dutch national side (and Ajax) from international obscurity in the 1970s.

Instead of Hoddle, we got Keegan. Passion, which we are now said to lack. But also clueless, as he pretty much confessed to. And then Eriksson and Capello, mercenaries with short-horizon missions. Neither should be blamed for trying to turn apparently golden dross into real gold. If the FA (or the Premier League if, God forbid, it took over the national side) wants another foreign coach, it should open its coffers to Wenger, one who might have the gumption and organisational ability to create a “project”, alongside visionaries such as Trevor Brooking, that goes beyond just the next qualifying rounds. But then Howard Wilkinson, despite his reputation one of the very few other visionaries, tried something along these lines in the late ’90s, partly to counteract what he saw as the potential drawbacks of the Premier League. It came to nothing.

The what-ifs, the Terry incidents, Capello and his various failings, player tiredness, Rio Ferdinand’s injury; the list of reasons is endless. Some of them may well have played a part, but the fault lies at a much more basic level, and it is a fault that has been known about for years. Yet little has been done to address it. From Italy, also humiliated in this World Cup, there is talk of a need to examine the structure of the game there. You wouldn’t bet against the Italians doing something about the failure in 2010. Whether England do, who knows.

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Kicking Off (Or Not): Why World Cups are dull

Oh dear. How the mighty fall. There will doubtless be some (expats) who have delighted in Spain’s defeat. I have never felt badly towards the Spanish team, though even I found myself willing the clock down against the Alpine dullards. Why is that, do you suppose? During the Euros, in the absence of England, it was easy to get behind the Spanish team, but then they went and blew it – blew the fact that they have been as useless, more useless, than England over the years. Winning something changed everything. But Spain will progress, despite a thought that has been nagging me that, like France in 2002, the team will just blow up. It might be remembered, though, that El Diego and Argentina lost their opening game in 1990, but still made the final.

Ah yes, 1990. In the days when World Cups still meant something. In that game, against Cameroon, you still had all what used to make World Cups great. Genuine, on-field violence. Why is this World Cup dull? Why have all World Cups since 1990 been dull? Because in 1994, FIFA decreed that the Americans had to have a tournament without physical contact, save for Leonardo’s elbow. What you got was Bebeto’s infuriating baby-rocking. Cutesy celebrations for an Americanised and sanitised era of football. Oh for the days of Argentina in 1978 and a Peruvian goalkeeper who just so happened to be Argentinian and who just so happened to let in six goals – against Argentina. Oh for the days of 1986 and a Uruguayan kicking my some time döppelganger Gordon Strachan up in the air after two minutes – and getting sent off.  Oh for the days of 1962 and David Coleman’s self-righteous indignation at the “disgrace” of Italy and Chile. The days of 1966 and Nobby Stiles attempting to put an end to detente by mugging France’s midfield, and the Argentinians – always the Argentinians – provoking Alf to his “animals”. One looked down the list of the first-round matches in the hope of some which years ago would have sparked a world war, but which have passed with nary an ankle tap. “After you, Luigi. No, after you, Roque.” Italy versus Paraguay. Thirty years ago or so, and it would have been mayhem. Not now. More’s the pity. That’s why World Cups are dull.

Among the locals of course, there is World Cup “fever”, as the press like to refer to it. This mainly manifests itself in terms of noise pollution via car horns, and then the sound of whole cars being written off as Switzerland spoil the party. But there are not so many Spanish flags attached to a Seat aerial or trailing behind a moto, spluttering and farting along the main roads. There are more German flags to be seen. And of course English. St George’s cross and Union flags. Then there are some strange flags. Like the ones that Cheers have put on the Cheers buggy and outside the bar. It’s red with a white cross. Not white with a red cross, but red with a white cross. The vertical line is straight down the middle. Where does this flag come from? The closest, with any World Cup connotation, seems to be the Danish flag, but its vertical line is offset to the left. Danes there are, but they are not around in the same numbers as the English. And Cheers is, after all, meant to be a British (English) bar. I reckon that someone ordered some St George’s flags and got the colours round the wrong way.

Unlike the local Spanish I can’t really get worked up about it all. World Cups are no longer what they were and what they should be – utterly unjust and a thigh-high tackle away from actual bodily harm. Mind you, this one might be like others – England will prove to be rubbish, and Germany will win it.

David Coleman. Fabulous. The Battle of Santiago, 1962:

Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

It’s Leaving Home – World Cup In Mallorca

The World Cup draw has been made. We now know that from 12 June until 11 July, no one will be going on holiday, for that is the period during which England will play their first game and ultimately the final. If only.

I have never quite bought this argument that people don’t go on holiday because of the World Cup; it’s always seemed like a convenient excuse for those inclined to talk of bad times to be able to say that times are bad – all because of some football. True, there are some who prefer the comfort of their living-room sofa and the contents of their fridge and drinks cabinet to mucking in with fellow fans in a bar, but there are an awful lot who prefer the bar for football watching, wherever it is – back home or on holiday. With the hotels being even keener to keep the football watchers in the bars within their own several walls next summer, there will be nowhere in Mallorca where the football will not be available – and it will all be at convenient times; England’s qualifiers will take place at 8.30 in the evening or four in the afternoon, Spanish time.

The bar is the football terrace writ small, and with no restrictions on alcohol. It is the place of group tribalism, where the irrational hatred of mostly all teams England encounter is given high volume and much voice by wearers of the latest replica kit and bearers of high-sized shorts: Germany, the war, losing penalty shoot-outs and differences of opinion of a sun-lounger nature; Argentina – Rattin, Galtieri, Maradona and Simeone; France – because of Henry and because they’re French; Australia – because they normally beat England at any other sport; Portugal because they always beat England and Ronaldo is a cheating bastard; Ivory Coast because Drogba’s a cheating bastard; Italy because they’re all cheating bastards; even Spain now, because they are no longer the great cockers-up as England still are. In the first round, the USA will be despised because they’ve all got too much money and caused the banking crisis, the Algerians will be damned because they’re Muslims, the Slovenians will be the object of derision because Slovenia is a small country that no one had heard of until a few years ago and everyone confuses with Slovakia, another small country no one had heard of until a few years ago. There’s always some reason.

Then there’s the opportunity for a bit of light-hearted violence. On holiday during the World Cup makes this all the more convenient with competing nations represented in-resort – Germans, Danes, Dutch, Italians, French, Swiss; doesn’t really matter which, they’re all foreign, after all. And there’s the chance to parade in the streets and instruct the locals as to some choice but limited English vocabulary: F, C, W, take your pick, or even put them in combination. The chance, too, to drape flags of St. George from hotel balconies, flags identifying some small part of England, announced to passers-by – Runcorn, Peterborough, Dagenham.

And as for the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish (north and Republic), there is no excuse to stay at home, as there’s nothing to watch anyway, except England hopefully being stuffed. So, they’ll be heading for Mallorca, along with the England supporters about whom there will be alarm among the local authorities which will try and impose new restrictions on bars, which will issue warnings as to fans sleeping on beaches and causing general chaos. And they will, as usual, get it wrong because actually there never is that much chaos, if any. Despite all the foregoing, there never is much by the way of trouble, just football fans out for a good time, a few of the boys’ bevvies, watching the footy in the sun. World Cup on holiday. They’ll be flocking in – whatever some might say to the contrary. Oh, and if on 11 July, by some miracle … .