Of Balls and Beers

Well I am feeling a bit miserable today, not because of the terrible England display last night, but the 5 pints of Zywiec that went with it. I’d forgotten that the Polish draught Zywiec is rather more lethal than its canned English cousin. However some thoughts on the football have emerged through the hazy mist today.

The economist Nicholas Taleb doesn’t read newspapers as he believes (and I’m paraphrasing, probably inaccurately, here) that they create false perspectives and a focus on immediate, temporary priorities.

The BBC reports that Fabio Capello praised Montenegro following last night’s 0-0 draw accordingly: "You have to respect little countries. They have good players. At this moment they are psychologically at a high moment."

Ignoring player selection, management issues, dodgy metatarsals and focusing only on the incentives for a second, I wonder if we haven’t somehow set our national players’ mental states to auto-failure.

Let’s say I’m an England player on 100,000 grand a week in one of the big 6 English teams (I’ve had this dream before). I am known and loved around the world and all the top clubs want me in their side. Every so often I have to play additional games during my long football league season that gain me no extra cash (England players give their fees to charity) expose me to intrusive scrutiny of my private life or abuse from the Great British Public (Rooney, Terry, Cole and so on and on and on) leave me at greater risk of tiredness and injury and oblige me to spend long periods away from my friends or family. Some return for nothing when international stardom is an average part of the day job.

I wonder if, in making the premier league the most competitive and commercial football league in the world, we haven’t just slightly overcooked the national team's pudding, altering a player’s ambitions from the old days when playing for England was the greatest honour and accolade achievable but is now a distraction from the real game, the real business of football. After we lost against Germany in the World Cup (I was in the stadium) the players just trudged off, next seen laughing on their flight home.

Or perhaps you just get the team your country deserves...