All things sporting [2]

Yep, only way England can get through is for Italy to win both their games and England to beat Costa Rica. Will be on level points so will be down to goal difference at that point.

So disappointing!

I think it was the manner of the loss which was so disappointing, a point might have been the enough to make the difference but the second goal was embarrassing.
No team outside of schoolboy level should concede a route 1 goal like that.

Still at least Rooney finally managed to score in a world cup, even if he did need two goes at it from point blank range and an empty goal!

I know nothing about football but even I could see that they had left their defenses ludicrously open, they were all bunched up at the other end of the pitch while Il Toothy went hell for leather down an empty pitch. bloody shaming. arent they supposed to be professionals?.

Ha ha ha, the ESPN commentators for the Italy v Costa Rica match are making Game of Thrones references when discussing the weather in Brazil.

I have decided England weren't meant to do well in this world cup. How can Costa Rica have beaten Uruguay and are now beating Italy? When did they get good?

Time to just enjoy random football now.

Two former world champions down, one to go (in group stage). I said dayum, Costa Rica!

France v Switzerland was very entertaining. Lots of action, lots of goals.

I'm going for the Germans.

Ive no interest in football either but, the way Costa Rica is going we'll be annihilated on Tuesday   What is the reason why we get thwacked every time ?? What is it we cant see that the other countries can ? There must be something in the Costa Rican coffee ?

Maybe its an attitude thing! After all England is the only football nation I know of who in the past have organised the victory parade before they've got out the group stages! (At least you didnt do that this time)

I notice a certain amount of glee at Englands defeat, people just cant resist a dig. Its unsporting and a bit cruddy.

For so long as England take it all so seriously and go on weeks of national mourning every time it happens it will remain funny.    

I would take a good look at your attitude towards Scottish defeat before you stick the boot in chum.

Now Mrs Figg- you mentioned that there was a certain amount of glee at England's defeat- and that glee does not just come from the Scots I can assure you, and I offered an explanation for it.
The point was not about how Scots deal with defeat, its about how England deals with it.

In the past England have gone into competitions not just expecting to win, but with the air of expecting to win because, well they are England, the greatest football nation in the world and they deserve to win it.
Its the same national trait that prompted the English national cricket team when they first lost to the colonies in Australia to set fire to the stumps and declare it 'the death of English cricket'- that was funny too.  

I think thats more a chip on the shoulder talking. You tend to think the English are arrogant as it suits you to think that, so you can gloat with a free conscience. The English dont gloat at defeated teams as we invented good sportsmanship.

I dont understand where my or my nations attitude to defeat comes into it.
You commented there was glee at england defeat- I offered an explanation for that glee.

Just last week BBC England did a report online highlighting how this world cup was mercifully relatively free of just the attitude I was talking about.
So its not just something Scots notice, those were english writers, writing for an english audience about england.

I'm afraid English football is still deeply connected in my mind with the hooliganism of a decade or two ago. I don't know if that still flavors how the rest of the world feels about things or not.

there are hooligans in every national team. Why single out English fans? we have cleaned up our act unlike Others. A guy was shot dead at the last Naples game in Italy. that doesnt happen in English games. Footballl is just another excuse to bash the English for the past.

No one was singling out England, it was just the topic- your original comment was specifically about England.

There are hooligans on all sides, and Italian, Turkish, many of the former Russian states are all much worse for it than England now is.
But in my view english national level hooliganism did have in it that same sense of privilege, that England has a right to things because its England.
And many other nations who were associated with Empire or rival empire building (so all of Europe, most of Africa, the US and large chunks elsewhere) tend to react badly to that.
It coming out as violence is bad, it coming out in England overreacting to every inevitable sporting defeat and other nations finding it funny when England lose, that is better.