There are many reasons why I dislike England's national football (soccer) team, even though I support the English club team Leicester City. But most of those reasons revolve around English fans. They make the same pathetic jokes about American soccer, but what's worse than them all making the same lame jokes, each thinks they are being the most witty and creative observations in the history of the world.
It's nearly impossible to read or hear and English fan comment on the sport in the US without making some lame reference to the fact that we refer to the game as soccer, not football. They act as though the United States is the sole linguistic rogue that uses the singularly bizarre term. For example, BBC pundit Gary Lineker summed up the US' 2002 World Cup performance as follows: Americans aren't supposed to like football - sorry "soccer" - let alone be able to play it, but they reached the quarter-finals playing some great stuff. He also made a similiar boring observation in his preview (where he brilliantly predicted the US would go nowhere).
Now I'll cut Lineker some slack. He was brilliant not only as a Leicester City player, but he helped save the club from financial oblivion in a year and a half ago. That said, even someone of his calibre is prone to this childishness.
I admit that 'football' is a more accurate term for the Beautiful Game than our gridiron version, since you rarely use your feet in the latter. But so the f* what? This petulance ignores the fact that many other countries also refer to the game primarily as soccer. Canada, Australia and New Zealand spring to mind. It's also commonly used in places like South Africa and Ireland. We Americans, and half a dozen other countries as well, call the sport soccer. Get over it!
My suspicion is that English fans are annoyed at their team's constant underachievement, despite fancying themselves as the inventors of the game. England won the 1966 World Cup, which they hosted. That was the only time in history they came close to winning any major trophy, world or continental. Somehow making fun of the Americans makes them feel better about their own perpetual disappointments. Too bad that the US has now won more major trophies (2-1) than they. This doesn't mean the US team is better than the English team. We're not quite there yet, though I'd love to kick their rear ends in the World Cup. But it means we're moving in the right direction. For all their big clubs and talented young players, they still disappoint their fans.
But another reason I can't support England is simply because of the idiotic behavior of some of their fans. YES, I know they are a small minority. YES, I know most fans are good, decent people who support their team the right way. But the fact remains that the English hooligans, whatever their true number, cause far more havoc, on a regular basis, than thugs from any other country. There were a few problems in England itself during this month's Euro 2004 tournament (hosted in Portugal). There were bigger problems with England fans in Belgium (Euro 2000) and France (World Cup 1998). And this was long after the country had supposedly addressed the problems from the dark days of the 1980s.
From the sublime. Agence France Presse was one of many news' sources to report that a photo of England captain David Beckham in a London art gallery was defaced. "Somebody has gone in this morning and written across the Beckham image 'You loosers'," said David Grob, the curator of the photographic exhibition of the world's greatest living footballers at the Royal Academy of Arts in central London. Although Beckham is the second most overrated soccer player in the world today, it's patently absurd for someone call another a loser if they can't even spell the word.
Then the ridiculous. I read in The Guardian that following his controversial decision to disallow a late England goal in the quarterfinal against Portugal, Swiss referee Urs Meier has gone into hiding with police protection after receiving death threats and hate email from England fans in a backlash fuelled by the Sun. It's certainly no surprise that a Rupert Murdoch tabloid like The Sun would fuel such hysteria; they regularly run obscene, jingoistic covers whenever England play Germany.
Mr Meier, 45, said he had been forced to leave his home in northern Switzerland after a torrent of media abuse that followed within hours of him disallowing a goal by Sol Campbell in the dying minutes of normal time in the game. Swiss police are now guarding the referee day and night after advising him to go into hiding following the death threats.
[...]
The paper claimed the nation was "robbed" by a "half-wit" referee who made a "heartbreaking decision".
This was followed over the weekend by reports in the Daily Mail and the Sun, revealing that Mr Meier had left his wife, Franziska, with whom he has two children, for referee Nicole Petignat. The papers published details of where he lived and worked.
The Sun followed this up early this week by sticking a huge St George flag outside his home in northern Switzerland. By then Mr Meier had already closed his office and left his home.
But though it would be nice to portray this as limited to the yellow press, The Guardian noted:
The media were not the only ones to take umbrage with his decision to disallow Campbell's goal, however.
Last Friday supermarket chain Asda offered Swiss nationals a special free eye test in any one of its 68 optical stores.
"Lets face it, we were robbed," David Rutley, the director of financial services at Asda, was quoted as saying in the British media.
And most disgustingly:
The wave of anti-Swiss feeling among England fans claimed its first victim on a Greek island, when a Swiss girl was kicked to the ground and left with a broken arm by England fans after they spotted her wearing a Swiss football shirt.
Manu Peyer, 22, said she had been wearing the t-shirt, showing the red and white Swiss national colours, in a bar on the island of Zakynthos.
Ms Peyer, who is a big England fan, said she had been just as upset as the English over Mr Meier's refusal to count a goal that might have secured the game for England.
Three English hooligans, who were furious when they saw her t-shirt, watched her as she walked home to her holiday apartment before attacking her.
"One of them hit me in the face with his fist and I fell to the ground because of the force of his punch," said Ms Peyer.
The shaven-headed attackers then began kicking her as she lay on the ground.
When the ordeal was over, Ms Peyer had a swollen eye, a squashed nose and a broken arm. She had to go to hospital for treatment. She has also been forced to take leave from work.
"I think they beat me up because of Meyer's ominous call on the goal," Ms Peyer told Swiss radio after she had returned to her home town of Zurich.
Again and again and again you read this sort of thing about English fans. Nigerian fans and Argentinian fans and Mexican fans are just as passionate as English fans, if not more so. Yet they can travel abroad without these sort of scumbags causing problems practically every single time. The Scots and Irish can drink alcohol yet support their side in a civilized way. Yet something in the otherwise restrained English culture seems to almost sanction this sort of excess as long as they call it soc.., er, football-related. I'm sorry but thuggery is thuggery.
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