Mind The Gap

When I was a kid I was amazed by the London Underground.  My parents are avowed Anglophiles, so the rose-tinted glasses were on from the first trip to England. “What an amazing system is this tube?” I thought to myself, “best thing since sliced bread! Sherlock Holmes silhouettes on the walls of the Baker Street stop! And they even say 'mind the gap' when you step off! Wow! These people are incredible – they think of everything!”

Subsequent visits to London later on in life eventually exposed the tube for what it is: great concept and system when it works, but supported by an infrastructure that is quite dated to say the least (a Londoner once remarked to me that it's ‘even older than Australia’!). It’s also a service that’s costlier than an Arsenal season ticket, but incredibly, often breaks down in times of bad weather, which happens to be the rule rather than the exception.

I often smiled to myself whenever I heard tourists visiting London during the summer months remarking: 'we used the tube, it's great'. The reason for this was that so many regular commuters (mostly English) had shared a vastly different opinion with me. Eventually even the ‘mind the gap’ announcements seemed rather pointless. A brilliant stand-up comedian on tv once had me in stitches as he made fun of these 'mind the gap' announcements. He was a Yank plying his trade in London, and asked how someone could ever fall into the gap. I remember him ending his skit with the following warning: 'if you can't make it past the gap, then beware the world beyond'!

So anyway - when it comes to the tube, there’s clearly a gap between expectation and reality. One should be wary of falling into it. And when it comes to the English national team, many England fans repeatedly fall into the gap between their expectations and reality. As recently revealed by their latest couple of world cup games against Italy and Uruguay, England are not yet the world beaters that their army of fans expects them to be. The stark reality is that they haven’t been for a few decades now.

 

 

 

Entire books and treatises have been written about why England has fallen behind in the world game. It’s an interesting argument which can be discussed till the cows come home. My own view is that England usually have an outside chance of winning the tournament, but in Brazil they fluffed their lines because they got a bit ahead of themselves. Their previously untested formation of 4-2-3-1 was perhaps too bold a roll of the dice by Hodgson, and one which backfired. I think this system relied heavily on zonal marking, which England did not have the defensive personnel to implement against the likes of Balotelli and Suarez.

That said, a young Three Lions side lost by one goal to Italy, Europe’s most successful team in the tournament, and Uruguay who – lest we forget – are still reigning Copa America champions. England’s quality of passing was also some of the best I’ve seen since 1990, but now the usual witch hunt following their elimination has already begun, as the ‘prawn sandwich brigade’ (to borrow a phrase from Roy Keane) bay for the blood of a scapegoat and Fleet Street’s tabloids fan the frenzy to sell more of their rubbish newspapers.

And this time around, it seems that things have taken a new turn for the worse! An already terrible situation has hardly been helped by the actions – or should I say antics – of certain players who are obviously still ‘drinking the kool-aid’ (as the Aussies put it) i.e. believing the bull!  This week Wayne Rooney and Joe Hart both fell into the gap after the howling yobs, going before the camera to apologise to the English public for not making it to the second round.

They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. But as well intended as their apology might have been, this act was in my mind the absolute height of juvenile idiocy and a bottomless abyss of low farce. By clearly ignoring the gap between reality and expectation, Hart and Rooney have essentially invited further phlegm and outrage, since an apology means that you could have tried harder but didn’t. Someone please explain to them quick that although a player sometimes cannot do much about losing a game, there is much they can do about losing with dignity.

 

In a tone usually saved for funeral speeches, Joe Hart spluttered that he ‘can’t imagine the sacrifices some people have been through’ to watch England in Brazil.

What? Since when is going on holiday to Brazil to watch the world cup a sacrifice? Talk about a first world problem. In any case, who’s to say that many English fans didn’t head to England’s games to watch Italy or Uruguay instead?

And then Rooney - whilst wearing the contrite expression of a wayward teenager caught hiding a naughty magazine in his schoolbag - whimpers: ‘we’re sorry for not going through’, before Joe Hart goes on to add: ‘we can only apologise that we’re not going to take this country any further in the tournament’.

Which in turn implies that it was yours to lose, right? This smacks of the yob army’s arrogance, in that it disrespects other nations who are also trying to win the cup! How much more dignified in victory were the post-match remarks of Uruguay’s manager - that wily old fox Tabarez - who said that England do not in fact have any weaknesses, and that it is the most negligible of details that decide these encounters. Look and learn from the man, boys!

Instead of providing any closure, all this apology has done is present the swooping vultures with more questions. Why didn’t Gerrard apologise on behalf of the team? Isn’t he the captain? Are there divisions in the camp? Was a vote taken to choose Rooney and Hart? Or were they chosen because they look like Laurel and Hardy? Were straws drawn in the dressing room to decide the apologists? Or did England play spin the bottle?

 

If this was the idea of some PR Consultant in the employ of the FA, then he or she should be sacked on the spot. And it is to be hoped that the idea was not Hodgson’s, although I doubt it. His reaction to defeat was in fact quite adequate, since he did not express any regret for sticking to his philosophy of a neat passing game, which if nothing else made England’s play easy on the neutral’s eye for the first time in ages.

 

 

 

Well, whoever’s idea it was, the damage has now been done. Hart and Rooney have gone ahead and justified the rants of the great unwashed, who constantly claim that pampered stars don’t really try hard enough, and don’t have enough passion to play for their country even though they are paid so incredibly well by their clubs. They have also risked setting a dangerous precedent.

Do English players now have to apologise each time they get knocked out of a finals? How they must look with envy at their British neighbours north of the border! Scotland haven’t qualified for a tournament since ’98, yet they haven’t had to apologise once. And for that matter, nor should Rooney and Hart. They have both been great servants for club and country, and if I were on 1% of their respective salaries I’d have quit the 3 Lions long ago, rather than cop all the stick and the kickings that they get each time they step into a major tournament wearing an England shirt.

Instead, they have incredibly gone on to undermine the calm and consistent approach that the FA is presently seeking to implement, which is one that should have been taken long ago instead of going down the ‘quick fix’ route of appointing foreign alchemists like an Eriksson or a Capello, paying them bumper salaries to try and turn lead into gold. And in truth, does the FA really have any choice? Which English manager could replace Hodgson effectively? Sherwood?! Redknapp (who’s already gone and stuck the knife in)? Bruce? Give me a break. Hodgson is the most accomplished of the lot and has no heir elect in sight. And neither do the much maligned Gerrard, Hart and Rooney.

This week Rooney also called for the England team to become more streetwise and ‘nasty’ to start winning again. But on this latest showing, if Rooney and his team mates cannot even mind the gap, then then they had best beware the big bad world beyond.