Ralph Underhill is on holiday.
We should beat Sweden today, and we could beat Sweden today but it would be a rash person who assumed that we will beat Sweden today.
The Betfair odds are that England are even money to win (in 90 mins), Sweden 3.8/1 and the draw is 2.35/1. The best looking of those odds to me is the Draw.
Who wins a football match cannot be considered to be the most important thing in the world, particularly a mere quarter final, but we English are right to be looking forward to the possibility of a World Cup Final appearance and perhaps more. But our hopes might be in tatters by this evening.
I’ve seen a few of the games so far and England don’t look bad. They show promise. But if you asked me now to name the England players I would struggle to get more than a handful of them. And if you put them in a line up I’d struggle even more to pick them out.
In contrast I could rattle off the 1966 players very easily – although I usually forget either Cohen or Wilson – tell you what positions they played and recognise their photographs.
I remember watching the game on a small (by today’s standards) black and white TV at home on my own – my parents weren’t really interested – and being gripped by it. It would be so nice to re-live that feeling a week on Sunday. But, Sweden first.
What is the Swedish for ‘Football’s coming home’.
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I have lots of Swedish friends and acquaintances, having been there many times birding, usually to a small island in the Holmoarna group Stora Fjaderagg ( The great feathered Egg for those in need of a translation) which is a bird observatory in the Baltic off Umea, about the size of Skokholm (Pembrokeshire).
Despite that to day I really do want England to win and yes because of impending Brexit there is a pending greater distance between us and our continental neighbours, something I certainly hugely regret.
When UKIP first existed I was canvassed by them whilst in Hereford where I was working at the time. All I said was I visit Europe every year, have many friends there, my partner was and still is German although she has lived here since 1979, I’m not a fan of the Commonwealth, don’t hark back to the days of empire with any nostalgia. He was rude and moved on to the next person. Despite all that today I’M ENGLISH, want a good game that WE WIN no other option can be contemplated.
Whilst hoping Jacob Rees-Mogg and all the other “Little Englanders” are struck by lightening (more likely than them coming to their senses).
I suspect that football is not a sufficiently patrician game for Rees-Mogg to be interested in it.
Oh sod the bloody football.
A step closer…..
Yawn …. but ever an agnostic, 1966 and all that 😉
If we could ‘beat’ Sweden at protecting nature, then I would be impressed and pleased. Wouldn’t that be great, if whole countries got excited about who had the highest percentage of wild land, most bio-diversity and most bio-abundance (thank you Simon Barnes), etc. That would be a world championship to get excited about. A broader concept (not just about humanity) of Robert Kennedy’s quote:
“GNP counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.”
Football? Don’t understand why anyone cares very much. Treat it as a bit of fun.