Sadly I was unable to be in Dublin to watch how Argentina is managing without Diego. I suspect life must be less entertaining down in the dressing room and on the touchline, but a little more ordered and strategic.
I did however belatedly catch some highlights of the England vs. Hungary match. That the majority of fans did not greet the team with boos as many pundits had predicted did not surprise me. Ok England’s performance in South Africa was a disgrace, as is the fact that Capello survived as Europe’s best paid national manager.
But the English have a long tradition of not only excusing defeats but turning them into something transforming, even heroic. Consider just a couple of examples- the Light Brigade massacred by Russian guns, and the retreat at Dunkirk.
In football, the English are good at giving even the lousiest teams the chance of redemption. It’s a post-imperial itch, a refusal to believe that England is just a small island struggling in a global society, or to accept the fact that individual English players tend to shine only when they play with foreigners not against them.
England came back to Wembley this week and played with passion and individual skill-almost like foreigners. The fans- 70,000 of them- were there, mostly to approve and applaud their own.
In Dublin, I read somewhere this morning, thousands (of Irish) applauded Lionel Messi.
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