Following on from last night’s post about the England team and my general disregard for it, here is the article from today’s Sun reacting to the Czech Republic game. It could not be any more perfect if it tried.
WASTERS – Our £5m-a-year boss is useless
FABIO CAPELLO lost the plot, lost an ally and almost lost the game on another wretched night for English football.
While Britain’s brave Olympians were pulling in more medals in Beijing, Capello’s millionaire footballers were pulling in the jeers.
Every cliche in the book is trotted out in less than 50 words. I actually admire how concise the journalist (Charlie Wyett) is because he’s written to brief absolutely perfectly.
Blame the England manager? Check.
He’s foreign? Even better.
“Wretched”. It’s a friendly, aren’t they all?
“Millionaire footballer” reference. Check – because earning makes you infallible.
What link does this have to the athletes in Beijing. They’re performing excellently and the whole country is proud. However what knock-on does that have for the football side. Do they suddenly reach new levels of performance because Becky Adlington broke the 800m world record? The annoying thing is you just know that up and down the country there are people reading it and going “hundred grand a week and they can’t even beat the Czechs – they should learn a thing or two from our boys in China”. Ironically enough, a few less gold medals and The Sun would have been the first to criticise them for taking lottery money and giving nothing back.
Look, we drew at home, in the rain, to a team ranked six places higher than us in the world. Hardly the end of the world for a new manager still coming to terms with a new set of players.
They quote Harry Redknapp – who by a marvellous co-incidence happens to be a paid Sun employee with his weekly betting column, who said:
“I’ve not seen a Fabio Capello team play worse than that. The second half was diabolical.”
Well you’ve clearly not watched a lot of Fabio Capello. His teams are known for playing defensive, unattractive football. That may be a cliche but it’s largely true. We didn’t lose and so far have only lost away in France under his reign when he’s just taken over. Classic Sun just using a rent-a-quote to say whatever it is they want to put across this week.
They’ve got three more articles about the game on their site and they’re equally dreadful.
“We love it”
