Cole Palmer and co. propped up and flattered by English exceptionalism
A tedious win against a minor side and a hapless loss. As ever, about par for England.
If you want a good laugh, look back at your England views before experience led you to be an unsurprised, whiskey-drinking, narrow-eyed cynic. How naive and hopeful we were.
Remember when ‘if only we had another man in charge’? Then another man was in charge and things were still unsatisfactory. Remember when ‘if only a player that was or wasn’t picked had been dropped or played’? Then that player was picked or dropped and it changed nothing.
Remember when ‘if only the manager showed more passion we’d be successful’, then the manager showed more passion and we were unsuccessful. Remember when ‘if only they would play the kids’, but then they played the kids and they were just as poor.
Remember when ‘if only the manager was tougher on the pampered players’, then the manager was tougher on the pampered players and it was still rotten. Remember when ‘if only we had a warmer, wiser old head to get the best out of the players’, and then we got one and it was still awful.
Remember when the manager was greedy, modern, picked all the wrong players, was stupid, wanted to keep dry, was weird, too passionate, too cold, too chummy, too hard, too old, too woke. Eighteen managers since Sir Alf: all the wrong man, all the wrong players, all playing the wrong tactics, all playing substitutes too late, all in the wrong formations. Stop it. No more excuses. Don’t you realise how pathetic this is now?
Decades of failure. Decades of ‘we should be beating …’ and ‘if only we’d …’ views asserted with absolute certainty. Even when the stars aligned and we reached major finals, it didn’t stop.
We have all done this and been proven wrong, time and time again. I laugh now when I see a ‘he should play…’ comment. It’s so predictable. We have been fools. Whatever we’re suggesting, it won’t work. It never has. And trust me, it’s been tried. Just because you can’t remember it, it doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened.
In 58 years we’ve won nothing and by now, we really should have done, if only by the laws of average.
Our failure is an odd aberration with a unique explanation. Every other major nation and some minor has won something at least once.
It has rarely been said that the only reason we haven’t won anything is because the hundreds of players selected in that time have never been quite good enough often enough, as a collective. Just. Not. Good. Enough. Let that sink in.
Ignore what you’re told by a proven hapless and craven media and fanbase stuck over-rating and forever trying to ‘wipe away’ memories of bad performances instead of learning from them. The results don’t lie. It’s a big sample size. It might seem counterintuitive, but it just must be true.
When everything else has been ruled out, that must be the fact. It can’t be 58 years of bad luck and happenstance. They are consistently worse than those that beat us and some that don’t and struggle to beat many who are worse. Deal with it.
MORE ON ENGLAND FROM F365:
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This isn’t and hasn’t been accepted because of continuous English exceptionalism. The belief that, hey, we invented the game, of course we’re good enough. The consistent unjustified over-vaunting of English footballers is ceaseless. For example, an interview with Cole Palmer was described on ITV as ‘fascinating’ and Palmer as ‘laidback’ when any objective perception saw an almost comatose, bored, uninteresting, expressionless man. To so vaunt him was dishonest.
But the likes of Greece are not multi-million pound players, so in the public and media mind, they can’t be as good as our brave boys, they just played well on the day and England were very bad. They just can’t be as good. We’ve never even heard of any of them. That’s English exceptionalism, right there.
This is in all our DNA. English exceptionalism has its roots in Empire, and is something we were all raised with, along with the idea that we shall civilise innately inferior foreigners and natives. And we have an absolute right to exploit them while we’re doing it. We’re better than foreigners. We all inherited that. And that belief is still out there. Look at the success and prevalence of people who unapologetically propound versions of it. Make Britain Great again.
And when you feel superior and entitled, here come our footballers to prove it’s not the case and to feel the pressure of trying to prove it is. No wonder it is all so disappointing.
Look deep into your soul and you’ll find an echo of this exceptionalism. You might try to justify its existence by saying ‘they can’t be that bad, the likes of Bayern are buying them’ and that’s true. Except they’re buying more players from everywhere else and anyway, they are not buying an English player in an England context, they’re putting them into a team with all those pesky foreigners and judging them in that context. This is never mentioned when talking about players’ qualities.
No one would claim they’re not or have not been, good footballers (even Carlton Palmer), but they don’t play with 10 English players every week. Together, faults masked by their multi-national team-mates are cruelly exposed. That has to be true. Look at 58 years of results.
In the 70s and 80s, when teams were more regularly all-British, the same faults were even more evident and glaring. Hence the lack of World Cup qualification for 12 years. The lack of midfield control goes way back to the days of Colin Todd and Emlyn Hughes.
The reliance on superior strength and fitness got us so far, time and again; all a manager had when losing was to make the ‘more energy’ gesture, but as soon as we met a team who knew what they were doing, we couldn’t beat them, so we took glory in their failure, which just extended English exceptionalism and further entrenched failure as actually bus parade-worthy success.
Until we lose this old attitude from our culture, and stop dressing up players as world beaters when they have time and again proven not to be, we’re doomed to repeat the failures. That won’t happen soon.
England is largely quite conservative. A lot of people have everything, up to and including self-identity, invested in English exceptionalism and they are still thoughtlessly pushing the same old attitudes and beliefs. There is some evidence that Gareth Southgate managed to partially erase it with some success and took it as far as he could before the old pressures raised their heads again. But the fact is, away from England, the players are vaunted by all and sundry and ensconced in that relentless hero worship.
It is fed and watered every day and anyone who points it out as a negative is predictably decried. That’s how you know it’s the correct perception, but regardless, the roots of failure are thus perpetuated, ironically by those who claim to be the true patriots.
Can any manager understand and counter this when everyone from media heads to players, ex-players and presenters are all drinking the same Kool-Aid and judging you by inappropriate standards? A new man is needed but no one knows who. Predictably, some just pick someone domestically successful. Tried that. Failed. How about a progressive innovator? Tried that. Failed. How about someone successful at overseas clubs? Tried that. Failed. There isn’t any type that has not tried and failed, except the manager of the women’s national side. But she too would try and fail in the face of overwhelming conservative negativity.
British, English, German or from the Cook Islands, England has long looked to managers as father figures, a QR code to go directly to success, or a footballing Indiana Jones with some mysterious ancient key to unlock the door marked ‘success’. But it will make no difference while we breed footballers with the same cultural hinterland, who are propped up, rewarded and flattered by it.
That, or, as my dad used to say, ‘they care more about their hair than playing football’. I thought he was daft, but in a way, now more than ever, he may have had something.
MORE ON ENGLAND FROM F365:
👉 England player ratings vs Finland: Cole Palmer fluffs chance, Gomes shines, Walker doesn’tg
👉 England need John Stones in midfield for Declan Rice’s ego
👉 ‘I can’t believe how bad he is defensively’: Roy Keane warns England man will be ‘found out’