Rod Liddle: Our World Cup Empire is a mystery to me
SO, the Republic of Ireland have failed to qualify for next year’s World Cup finals.
This has occasioned in me a deep sense of grief, but one which I hope, in time, I will come to terms with. No Robbie Keane cheekily sliding to the ground pretending to shoot an arrow into the crowd; no Kenny Cunningham hacking chunks of flesh off anybody within 50 metres. No heroic defeat to Togo in the last minute of the last game of the group stage. But never mind, huh? No use crying over spilt milk, etc.
Can anybody explain to me why every news and broadcasting organisation treats the Republic as if it were one of the home nations — when, as the angry ghosts of Eamon De Valera and Michael Collins would attest, it most certainly is not? The Irish are afforded exactly the same coverage as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland — three countries which, last time I looked, still had at least nominal membership of the United Kingdom.
Is it vestigial imperialism on the part of sports journalists? Is it assumed that the south’s decision to break away is a mere temporary aberrance, which will one day be corrected and that they didn’t mean it really? Is it perhaps an attempt to take account of the historic friendship that exists between our two countries — or, as the Irish might put it, 1,000 years of Bruddish Uppression? Or is it a form of benevolent condescension — we all adore the Irish, with their cheerful too-rye-aye fiddle-based jigs and love of something they refer to as “the craic”? It cannot be geographical proximity, because the French and the Belgians are closer to the mainland and we couldn’t give a monkey’s about them.
Nor can it be a respect for their footballing prowess: the Republic’s team has all the skill and guile and subtlety of Blackburn Rovers on a bad day. And it’s not the fact that lots of Irish people live in England, otherwise we would pay similar attention to the sporting aspirations of, say, Pakistan or Nigeria. Or, more recently, Poland and Kosovo.
It’s true that a lot of England supporters — all of the ones I know, at least — were certainly very interested in the score from Lansdowne Road last week: they were cheering on the Swiss with almost as much fervour as they were cheering on the national side. But then, Motty didn’t interrupt his commentary of the England versus Poland game to say: “. . . and it’s absolutely terrific news from Dublin, where the P addies are on their way out of the World Cup”.
He instead sounded thoroughly upset. Perhaps he was being deeply ironic, although of all the many qualities one associates with John Motson, a facility for gentle irony does not usually figure among them. Frankly, it’s all a bit of a mystery to me.
No less of a mystery was the praise heaped — universally — upon Shaun Wright-Phillips following England’s thoroughly competent defeat of the lugubrious Poles. I watched Wright-Phillips very closely on Wednesday night; hitherto, I’ve always been a bit of a fan and what’s more, somewhat agnostic on the subject of David Beckham, too. But I cannot recall a single occasion last week where Shaun completed a pass to a member of his own team. Not one. On every single occasion he ended up giving the ball to somebody whose name looked like a difficult, if high-scoring, Scrabble hand.
Sure, he ran very fast along the touchline, quite often with the ball at his feet and I suppose one could say that he caused anxiety within the Polish defence. But it was the sort of anxiety that might be occasioned by a decapitated polecat let loose in a crowded pub, the nerve endings still jangling but sadly disconnected from the cerebral cortex. And wholly devoid of teeth. A blur of pointless and frenetic activity that might be disquieting — but never really dangerous.
How one longed for the carefully flighted ball into the box or the incisive pass through the middle. The difficult truth is, Beckham is incapable of skinning a defender and Wright-Phillips seems incapable of doing anything even vaguely useful once he has.
Almost all of the quality balls last Wednesday were executed by another member of the Chelsea reserves, Joe Cole, who, I thought, played his best game so far for England. Along with the magnificent Ledley King and, of course, Frank Lampard, Cole was the star of the show — although, for once, Michael Owen’s contribution seemed greatly underrated by the pundits the following morning: for a start, he scored a good goal: what more do you want? Peter Crouch’s presence in the team, meanwhile, still seems to me a humorous anomaly, rather as if Les Dennis were one of the candidates attempting to become leader of the Conservative party. It may well be that Crouch is one of the very few Premiership players whose interviews don’t make you want to take out your Luger in a spasm of visceral loathing. But being a decent, palpably sentient, even thoughtful human being should not qualify one to play for England, otherwise we would have a defence that consisted of Linvoy Primus, Graeme Le Saux, Rufus Brevett and Sir Trevor Phillips, which I suspect would look a bit shaky when we come up against the Argies next summer.
Or, indeed, the wonderful Swiss.
13/11/2006, 5:36 PM
livehead1
this was discussed when the article was written, over a YEAR ago :confused:
