Big Phil Pulls Out!
I was just reading through some footballing news and came across this tidbit:
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=366239&cc=5901
In a nutshell, 'Big Phil' Scolari, a fantastic Brazilian football manager (currently managing the Portuguese national team), has withdrawn his name from contention for the future opening as the England national team manager to replace Sven Goran Eriksson (whom I rather liked in that position).
Big Phil would have been the perfect candidate to turn around the national team of the country that originated the beautiful game, but as is all to typical of European football, the excessive media coverage was just too distracting. (As an interesting sidebar- evidently Big Phil, a Brazilian, reportedly has a poor grasp of English, speaking it with, of all things, an Italian accent!)
But in my opinion this is merely a symptom of the real problem affecting the English national team- it is just that, the English national team. It should be the British national team! If the inane little national football associations put their collective heads together and pulled said collective heads out of their collective asses long enough to realize that Scotland, Wales, England, and, oh my God, Northern Ireland, are not in fact separate nations, but merely small parts of a larger whole (or should that be "hole"?), and swallowed their ridiculous prides long enough to actually field a British national team, they would immediately become one of the world's greatest football nations!
Alas, such are the peculiarities of world football. Please try to explain that Franklin Foer! The only reasonable response to the conundrum of the British national football team segmented into smaller (non)national teams without an actual country is: Lets demand Iowa be allowed a national soccer team in the World Cup (population of Wales: ~2.9 million; population of Iowa: ~2.94 million). Hell, I think New Jersey would be more competitive than those damn Northern Irish semi-professionals! (Northern Ireland population: ~ 1.7 million; New Jersey population: ~8.7 million- and New Jersey has been the birth place of some of our best soccer players- Tab Ramos [not actually born there, but grew up], Tony Meola, John Harkes, etc.). Lets go Jersey!
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story?id=366239&cc=5901
In a nutshell, 'Big Phil' Scolari, a fantastic Brazilian football manager (currently managing the Portuguese national team), has withdrawn his name from contention for the future opening as the England national team manager to replace Sven Goran Eriksson (whom I rather liked in that position).
Big Phil would have been the perfect candidate to turn around the national team of the country that originated the beautiful game, but as is all to typical of European football, the excessive media coverage was just too distracting. (As an interesting sidebar- evidently Big Phil, a Brazilian, reportedly has a poor grasp of English, speaking it with, of all things, an Italian accent!)
But in my opinion this is merely a symptom of the real problem affecting the English national team- it is just that, the English national team. It should be the British national team! If the inane little national football associations put their collective heads together and pulled said collective heads out of their collective asses long enough to realize that Scotland, Wales, England, and, oh my God, Northern Ireland, are not in fact separate nations, but merely small parts of a larger whole (or should that be "hole"?), and swallowed their ridiculous prides long enough to actually field a British national team, they would immediately become one of the world's greatest football nations!
Alas, such are the peculiarities of world football. Please try to explain that Franklin Foer! The only reasonable response to the conundrum of the British national football team segmented into smaller (non)national teams without an actual country is: Lets demand Iowa be allowed a national soccer team in the World Cup (population of Wales: ~2.9 million; population of Iowa: ~2.94 million). Hell, I think New Jersey would be more competitive than those damn Northern Irish semi-professionals! (Northern Ireland population: ~ 1.7 million; New Jersey population: ~8.7 million- and New Jersey has been the birth place of some of our best soccer players- Tab Ramos [not actually born there, but grew up], Tony Meola, John Harkes, etc.). Lets go Jersey!
posted by Fool Ishy at 10:06 PM
1 Comments:
Ah, but they are very seperate nations, only drawn together by the same King about 400 yrs ago.
Actually they are negotiating a GB team for the Olympics, but I'm not going to hold my breath..... :)
Post a Comment
<< Home