England vs. Germany; the final smackdown

If you’re like me (and you’re English) you probably watched yesterdays game with a mixture of excitement and optimism. So we hadn’t been playing all that well but we had a good team and a manager with an outstanding CV. Germany aren’t that good. Surely a victory was possible…You may have noticed I’m writing in the past tense . This is because (in case you’ve been living under a rock) England’s world cup hopes are no more following a pounding at the feet of Germany. Germany, quite literally, ran rings around our defenders.

I don’t want to dwell too much on the 4-1 though (mostly because it makes me angry). What I brought you hear to talk about is what should have been the 4-2 or given the actions of the referee possibly 4-4….or even 2-2. Who knows? His first blunder was getting in the way of Rooney charging up the field causing him to lose the ball. Now, given Rooney’s performance over the last couple of weeks this doesn’t necessarily mean a goal of course but like I said; who knows. Mr. Ref also missed quite an obvious hand ball during a free kick which should have resulted in a penalty. But all this pails into insignificance. I, and I think I speak for the nation here, would be willing to forgive all that if he hadn’t disallowed a perfectly legitimate goal by Frank Lampard in the 38th minute. We were ecstatic that we’d managed to equalize so soon after we thought we were finished but no….it was not meant to be. Ridiculous really as we all saw it; Copello saw it, Lampard saw it, but Mr. Magoo obviously forget to wear his glasses that day.

You may think there’s no point moaning…we still would have lost 4-2. We still played badly. Germany were still the better team. But how do you know? It’s possible that if we hadn’t gone off at half time and been told we’d been robbed of a goal we wouldn’t have been so determined to get another goal leaving our defense vulnerable to attack. You can’t dismiss the underlying psychological implications that this ‘missed’ goal created. Does the flap of a butterfly’s wing in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?

It was, however, quite funny coming back after half time and the referee started giving us free kicks all over the place. Someone had obviously shoved a TV screen under his nose during half time and gone ‘See? See? Goal. R-tard’. Apparently the referee was given extra security leaving the stadium as they were worried there would be an angry backlash from the England fans. Facebook has been swamped with (sometime borderline racist) remarks about the German team despite the fact that at the end of the day they were the better team. I think we need to remember it’s important not get too carried away. People make mistakes. And remember, if we had managed to hold the draw it would have gone to penalties and then we’d be buggered anyway.