WELL – that was surely the shortest World Cup on record. After their crushing 6-2 win over Iran, the BBC commentators have as if covering an American Presidential Election, called it for England. Knighthoods for Gareth Southgate and Harry Kane, open-top bus tour of central London, and we can all relax and look forward to a great Christmas.
Football is, according to them, indeed coming home and Johnny Foreigner has been handed a damned good thrashing.
I know, I've seen this movie before, umpteen times, but, I think I will need to switch full-time to Netflix and Amazon Prime – just how the wonderful Beth Dutton gets herself out of her latest bit of bother in Yellowstone will, I am sure, be more entertaining than the fitba.
Maybe, however, not as entertaining as what is currently the best and funniest double act on the box. Who needs Ant and Dec, when you've got John Champion and Ally McCoist. Their commentary on a fairly dull game between Senegal and the most-average Netherlands team I've seen in ages lifted a terrible game to the watchable category.
The best bit of USA v Wales was the anthems. All those red necks hootin' and a hollerin' their way through The Star Spangled Banner, then being blown away by the massed choir in red giving it laldy with Mae Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau. I've heard it countless times at rugby internationals, but Monday's rendition was something else – 64 years of hurt, pride and passion, compressed into under 90 seconds.
Mind you, whatever Welsh Manager Robert Page said to his men at half time, it clearly worked – they were a different team in the second half and, with a wee bit of luck, plus a bit more application from Messrs Ramsey and Bale, might have won it.
Meanwhile, back in the land of purritch and auld claes, The Breengers are looking for a new manager after the sacking of Giovanni van Bronckhorst. The King' XI's boards of directors have been making poor decisions for most of this century, and for a few years before that in the old one.
I feel sorry already for the next occupant of that big office at the top of the marble staircase. He's inheriting a poor team, a squad choc-a-bloc with over-paid players who are quite simply NRC – Not Rangers Class, and fated to, at best, finish a distant second to a Celtic squad, similarly full of players who are Not Celtic Class. I will concede, Joe Hart is a better goalkeeper than either John Fallon or Evan Williams was, but, Big Joe apart, there is not a current Celtic player who could have got a game for The Quality Street Gang, far less The Lisbon Lions.
Still, sacking GVB is an early Christmas present to the current A team of the Scottish Football Writers Association, giving them perhaps weeks of doing what they do best4 – writing fictional speculation pieces on who will get the Ibrox gig, while calling round then entertaining their contacts in the know for a tasty rumour they can rehash.
A FINAL THOUGHT on that diddy competition in Qatar. Willie Collum, if he is watching back home, must be wondering how he failed to make the cut for the Qatar gig. Oor Wulllie is definitely a better referee than some we have already seen – bloody hell, even Dross is a better flag waver than some who are there.
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