Notes from the Living Room: The Round of Sixteen

By David C. Watson Jun 27, 2006, 16:04 GMT

David Campbell Watson hails from Edinburgh in Scotland and runs a multi-media consultancy in Los Angeles. A proud supporter of the fabulous Heart of Midlothian Football Club, David is happily married to Susie who by no fault of her own is English.

Quite what goes through the minds of the mandarins at FIFA is frankly beyond me.  They have decreed that henceforth and throughout the known world, this stage of the tournament shall be known as the above and woe-betide any of us with the temerity to refer to it as “the knockout stages.”  What a lot of pretentious drivel that is.  It sounds like something offered up at the end of a dinner party.  Camembert, anyone?                                                                                

However for all you football lovers out there, this is when the World Cup comes alive.  If you don’t turn up with a real performance, you’re going home - unless you’re England of course, in which case you can probably amble along with another mediocre showing and still scrape through to the next stage.

To Stuttgart 2006 and no international tournament would be complete without the “English Disease” coming to town.  They warmed up the other day with a couple of skirmishes and then a hardcore went for the full-frontal national embarrassment last night - and that was just the players’ wives.  Meanwhile 300-odd of the less celebrated followers of the England team, despite being offered every opportunity to leave it well alone by the local constabulary, just couldn’t help ruining it for the rest of the estimated 60,000 English fans who by all accounts are having a tremendous time over there.  According to my calculations, that’s a barely representative .005% now occupying nearly 99% of the worldwide media space.   Is it too much to ask of these clowns to be remotely thankful for the hospitality and just enjoy the party? 

A party that is throwing up something I never thought I’d see in my lifetime - a bunch of Germans genuinely enjoying themselves in public.  A million of them, yes that’s right a million, going mad in the Berlin Fan Mile while their team simply overwhelmed Sweden.  .  Even captain Michael Ballack has been making happy noises and he’s inherited the required national mantle of moany old git, a proud line stretching all the way back to Frederick the Great.   This game should have been called off early in the first half with two goals in the first twelve minutes effectively killing it as a sporting contest.  If they can find a way past Argentina, and that’s a big ask, they’re probably going to win this.

Now back to my favorite subject - England.  It’s getting to the point where it’s difficult to be any ruder about this shower but I’m going to cut the players some slack after today’s performance against Ecuador and steam into the coaching staff.  Regular readers will know that I’m not one of Sven’s bigger fans.    He heads up one of the most overpaid and overrated coaching benches in modern football history.  The fact that his immediate successor sits right beside him on said bench should be a cause for followers of the national side to reach for a boatload of Prozac. 

Steve McClaren spends the whole game cross-legged doodling on a notepad.  What he’s actually doing is a complete mystery to me.  I’d hazard a guess at drawing cuddly cartoon pictures of Svenny for the kids.  I guarantee you it’s unlikely to be another devastating tactical innovation as this is a staff that seems a world away from understanding how to get the best out of some genuinely talented players. How is it possible to turn a bunch of world-beaters with their clubs into such a clueless shower? 

Now let’s contrast this with the splendidly monikered Mr.Pekerman, the head coach of Argentina, who handles multiple roles such as massaging the egos of an extravagantly gifted squad while imposing tactical discipline with a quiet equanimity.  The fact that he does so on a salary of USD 170,000 per year compared to the USD 7 million that the incompetent English Football Association horse over to Eriksson should be a source of such embarrassment to Brian Barwick and co. that if they had any self-respect, they’d lock themselves in a dark room and not come out for a very, very long time indeed. 

Anyway England is through to the Quarter Finals, offering me one more chance to slag them off in print.  Their inevitable future conquerors should have been the winner of the Netherlands versus Portugal, but having just watched this farcical yet hugely enjoyable contest handled by a referee who suffered a serious attack of the Graham Polls, it’s now dawned on me that it’ll be difficult for Portugal’s Big Phil to field anything like a full-strength side next time out.  “Lucky England,” as they say.