The armband passes

Attributes that contribute to being Greatest Living Englishman include being good looking and being good at football?

Alright, crisp salutes to Becks and Bowie.

Though I think the initials they share IS a coincidence.

Beckham is a limited footballer, but within those limits he was awfully good when at his peak. I imagine that the manager kept selecting him because so few of the others looked remotely capable of manufacturing a chance to score.

Ave Beckham! And I would like to add that Beckham is an honourable man.

England looks to be the equivalent of the pre-2004 Red Sox in American baseball, condemned to lose because of their fans. The Red Sox fans were so quick to attack a struggling Red Sox player that they ended up hurting the team. Case in point: in summer 2003 Pedro Martinez, the Red Sox star pitcher, stopped playing a while because of an injury. From memory it was a back injury; in any case, it was the kind of injury which had a certain subjectiveness to it. The Red Sox fans began to criticize quite vehemently his willingness to play. Pedro didn’t have dedication, they said. It was the lead subject of talk radio for a month. Still, in the fall, the Red Sox made the play-offs and faced their arch-enemy, the Yankees, in the American League Championship Series. Pedro pitches in the deciding game and, with the Red Sox ahead, is evidently tiring in the sixth or seventh inning. The Red Sox manager comes to the mound and asks Pedro how he feels. Pedro says he wants to stay in the game. He does, the Yankees score immediately and win the game and the series. My guess is that all that fan harassment in the summer caused Pedro to want to stay in the game – to prove he was a dedicated player – rather than being sensible and listening to his body.

This isn’t to say that Red Sox fans aren’t great – they care about the team. Rather, in spite of themselves, they ended up doing precisely the opposite of what they wanted – having a winning team.

Anyway, as I said, English football fans strike me like these Red Sox fans. They are their team’s own worst enemy. In penalties the English players are now so scared of all the derision that they will get from the fans and the English press should they miss, that they just can’t put the ball in. The English players all tried to hit the ball safely – too safely – so the Portuguese goalie had no trouble stopping it.

Well, the Red Sox did eventually win. They won in the only way possible: with their backs to the wall, down 3-0 against the same Yankees in the next year’s ALCS, they found themselves in a zone where they had nothing to lose, where what the fans said didn’t matter any more. So they won. (Well, they also had a better team; that helps!)

As Nick Hornsby wrote:

“David Beckham, a man who, after all, has been photographed wearing a sarong. But then, that’s England all over at the moment. We’d still prefer to be bombing the Germans; but after sixty years, there’s a slowly dawning suspicion that those days aren’t coming back any time soon, and in the meantime, we must rely on sarong-wearing, multimillionaire pretty boys to kick the Argies for us. We’re not happy about it, but what can we do?”

At least half of this England team is seriously good.

The overall quality of the team guaranteed competitive games and promising possessions. But in soc-foot-cer-ball you need to have some players who can put the ball in the net. And in the World Cup you need world class scorers to beat world class defenders.

With no Owen and a hobbled Rooney, England had no world class finishers on its squad: no Klose, no Ronaldo, no Henry, no Ronaldinho, no the other Ronaldo, no Raul, no Shevchenko, no Robben.

Compare France. France played a fine all-around game against Brazil, but in the end it was Zidane to Henry that made the difference.

Dan, you present an odd list. Only two of the names on the list has advanced further than England. And it contains no one from Portugal, who is more impotent than England striker-wise, and that was true even after Rooney was sent off. But they are in the semi-finals. At this stage, it really is luck, tradition (compare England’s penalties with Germany’s) and the odd great move of the truly great footballer (aka Zidane) that makes the difference.

Beckham would probably play better if Posh didn’t wear his balls for earrings.

Dan, you present an odd list. Only two of the names on the list has advanced further than England. And it contains no one from Portugal, who is more impotent than England striker-wise, and that was true even after Rooney was sent off.

I didn’t mean to suggest that having a world class scorer guarantees a trip to the semis – only that lacking one makes it very difficult to advance that far.

I did mention both Ronaldos in my list – including Cristiano from Portugal. Pauleta, Figo and C. Ronaldo all appear to me to be more dangerous scoring threats than anyone England had out there yesterday. I’m sure with Owen and a 100% Rooney, England would have a much more potent attack. But I think Portugal has had the stronger side overall in this particular tournament.

Beckham is an honourable man.

I’ll second that, and what’s more, Wayne Rooney is a little thug. Previous red cards for shoving opposing players in the face after the whistle, etc. Sportswriters indulgently refer to his “mercurial temperament” but he should really be stripped of the national colours for dishonoring Queen and country. Except you’d get laughed at in England for such high-minded pretension.

That said, look at the rest of this tournament: pocked and marred by turf-diving nancies and aggro assholes from every nation, fans everywhere disgusted by the cynical dishonest way the game is played now. If there was one nation poised better than any other to play good clean football it was Britain – Rooney is only the third Englishman sent off in a WC game, because there is a strong tradition of English fair play, etc.

England could have fielded an honourable side, and though they might not have lifted the trophy, they would have won the admiration of the world, for playing the game idealistically in a debased and cynical age. Instead they fielded a thorough blackguard, called upon him to be the English messiah, no less, and got an entirely predictable result.

A team full of David Beckhams, now, that would be a team to watch. They might not win every match but they would surely restore the “beautiful game.”

Rob G, Wax Banks, you’re right that he had no easy role. Thanks for the vigorous defense–I’ll look forward to watching more of Crouch’s play.

I think the problem is more with the idea that once you name a captain you can’t drop him from the team and you can’t pass the armband to someone else without creating a crisis.

Reuben, Bryan Robson played for England until 1991-92, when he would have been 34 or 35.