Martin Amis on England in Euro 2004
He calls the penalty shoot-out a 'lottery', albeit a 'tawdry' one (and adds 'but any kind of win, for England, would have been a tawdry lottery') which won't endear him to Mr Barlow, but otherwise I quite enjoyed Martin Amis's article in today's Guardian on England's failed Euro 2004 campaign. Here's two snippets:The days when an England player's first touch could often be mistaken for an attempted clearance or a wild shot on goal - those days are over. The deficit is not in individual skill, it is in collective skill; it is in the apparently cultural indifference to possession . In 2004, football is no longer a dribbling game, still less a long-ball game (and how many balls did we float to our two haring midgets up front?); it is a possession game. The "clearance", as practised by England, is simply an anachronism. When an international defender heads it away, he heads it to a teammate. When we "clear" it, we just clear it, for two or three seconds.
It granted us the ritual of losing the shootout. Beckham "bravely" (ie vaingloriously) went first, and inspired his team by ballooning the kick without falling on his arse - which is what he did in Istanbul last October. (This time he blamed the penalty miss on the penalty spot, as, with infinite inanity, did Eriksson: "I complained personally to the Uefa official responsible about the penalty spot.")
posted by Matthew @ 6/28/2004 09:10:00 AM
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