United Road Take Me Home

Boo-Ya Tribe

This just in: England, it transpires, didn’t win the World Cup. This, contrary to the fact that the team is stuffed with players who regularly reach the level of mediocre in what giant footballing minds as diverse as Sam Allardyce and Phil Gartside routinely refer to as ‘The Best League in the World’. Tonight, we welcome our conquered heroes back onto the divot strewn sward that is Wembley, and the national media has decided that the only possible response to events in South Africa is a period of sustained and cathartic howling. It seems getting North Korean on their pampered asses is the only option.


Unable to be there and boo in person? Don’t fret. Sky, or whoever happens to be televising events, have rigged up a device that means everytime you press your red button a tiny boo will emit from the Wembley speaker system. Should enough of us press them at once it will produce a sound that will make the din of all those vuvezelas seem like a tinny whisper. Indeed it promises to be so deafening that the players on the pitch are likely to be reduced to shit-brained whimpering husks, crawling on the floor, pleading for mercy, until midday on Saturday when the Prem kicks-off and we can go back to treating them like demi-gods again.

What purpose will this orgy of flagellation and booing actually serve? Will the fans feel cleansed to have purged it from their system? Unlikely. Will it in any way help the team? We’ve already seen what Wayne Rooney thinks of fans who turn on their own team. Is he likely to hold up his hand and say ‘fair-do’s’ to this media-orchestrated frenzy? I doubt it. I’m not certain anything penetrates the egos of certain England players, so swaddled are they in luxury and wealth. But this barracking is only guaranteed to make the team more inhibited about wearing the England shirt, not less.

Will supporters of all the clubs who didn’t win the title last season boo their teams onto the pitch this weekend? Of course not. You can only despair at the media-led circus around the national team and the idiots who will fall into line and do their howling for them. Wouldn’t it be great if they didn’t do the media’s bidding tonight and cheered the team on like returning heroes? And the chances of that happening? About the same as England winning the next World Cup.

posted by Royton Red @ 10:59 AM