Who to support in the Euros? There is no team from the island of Ireland and so it will be Wales which gets my backing as well as my normal second team, that is to say anyone playing against England. When Wales gets knocked out, maybe mother Russia is the team to back.
My hostility to England is a rugby thing, the arrogance of English rugger just being too much to bear. I remember a game in Dublin many years ago where England were thrashing the old country and some odious toff sitting behind my father and I brayed “I really do wish the Irish would make a game of it.” Tosser. My father almost chucked a few quid into the buckets being held outside by Gerry Adams’ comrades. I say almost – of course he did not but English rugby and their supporters are very easy to dislike. Naturally, when one of the Celtic sides, or even the Frogs, defeat the Old Enemy, it is a cause for celebration here. It is a genetic thing.
But soccer is different. I really have no great antipathy towards the morons in the English national side. But its insistence on taking a knee to a Marxist organisation that wants to defund the police, end capitalism, abolish the nuclear family and boycott Israel is just annoying. Where would the millionaires taking a knee be if BLM’s crackpot ideas, which most black folks in Britain, let alone non blacks, think are divisive, were actually implemented?
England’s woke manager Gareth Southgate has today branded fans who boo taking the knee as “racist”. He is a moron for doing so. It is perfectly possible and rational to object to this Marxist and extremist organisation and its aims without being a racist. Next season, with the stadia full, fans will boo this homage to extremism in ever greater numbers however much Southgate and others insult them and, at some point, this ridiculous ceremony will be dropped.
Meanwhile, with a moron like Southgate in charge of a group of young men who have not thought through what they are doing, I am happy to cheer anyone playing England but can’t say I do even that with enthusiasm. The woke politicisation of soccer bores me. The antics of unintelligent prima donnas of all countries in playing for the foul bores me. I am not sure that I can be bothered to watch the tournament at all.
Of course Euro 2022 for the women’s game is very different and I am trying hard to get tickets for myself and my daughter to join up with the GAWA as we cheer on Northern Ireland. But 2021 can be a summer off from caring about what is no longer anything close to being a beautiful game.