When Will the English Media Ever Learn?

Patrick Barclay Demonstrates Why it's Not Just Their Neighbours That Enjoy English Failure

March 25

With just one win in the history of the World Cup, that playing all their matches at home, added to a history of repeated failure in the European version of the tournament, one might forgive the English if they saw themselves as an average football nation, akin to Sweden or USSR. After consecutive dismissals by Portugal in Finals, a nation with a third of the population and a hopelessly uncompetitive league, you might think even the most jingoistic English supporter would have cause for introspection. After finally admitting that they need a foreign manager for their international team to match the monopoly foreigners have at their top clubs, implicitly recognising that all footballing wisdom does not rest on their 'scepter'd isle', you may think that only the least responsible rabble rousing tabloids would resort back to the foolishness and bravado that has scarred their reputation as an international sports media. After finally failing to qualify for a Finals, Euro 2008, despite being handed their traditional easy draw, ...... well you get the point and I've probably already over-laboured it. Well you'd be wrong. In yesterday's (London) Times, no less than Senior Football Correspondent Patrick Barclay has penned an article entitled, "England can win the 2010 World Cup". Yes. Really. He cycles through a few reasons as supporting evidence, including that the weather might be nice in South Africa, thus implicitly suggesting only the heat has been England's enemy in the past. Bizarrely he cites a win over Denmark in a cooler climate as proof. How the Danes must have lost their natural advantage when the tropical heat of Nagita was cooled by a downpour! Without the beating sun of their native Denmark, they must have wilted. Full article with clues of author's bias!