Except that you did make it quite clear you were desperate for England to lose. You must relinquish at least one of the apologies. You are, I believe, first and foremost a gentleman c?
I think one may wish to to distinguish International Football from Tournament Football. Come international week, most of us on here are bitching about the lack of "real" footy and the god awful qualifiers / friendlies. How many fans actually watch the qualifiers with the same interest?
Come tournament finals, we do tend to watch most games. :shrug:
Of course, your last paragraph perfectly encapsulates this board.
All very nice, a, but you fail to spot the glaring contradiction at the heart of your argument.
You admit that you find this England team preferable to its predecessors containing said ‘thùndercûnts’. In doing so, you concede that your affection or otherwise for England teams is negotiable based on the individuals they contain. Which means that, in essence, you concede that the principle underpinning my distaste for this England team is valid. You are, in other words, no different to me in principle, we just happen to have different criteria. :shrug:
Speaking personally, though, what really bothers me about England football teams is the sheer level of conformity they tap into. I’ve always despised unthinking, reflexive conformity and that is at the heart of what you choose to call my misanthopy. That isn’t to say I’m not outwardly conformist in many respects, but I can say with my hand on my heart that where I conform, it is as a consequence of thought and self-examination. So for instance, I am patriotic because there are many things about this country which are admirable and worth defending. However, those things do not include a mediocre football team teeming with Spurs shítcùnts. And, if I may say so, I find the notion of assessing patriotism based on support for a sports team patently ludicrous. And it’s no less ludicrous when you propose it than when Norman Tebbit does.
For natural-born conformists who have never examined an idea in their lives, of course, England supporting in World Cups is second nature. They are quite able to reconcile hating Spurs 204 weeks out of 208 and then cheering on ‘Harry’ and ‘Alli’ the other four because they’ve never actually bothered thinking about it. Confront them with the parent absurdity of their position and they become enraged and start indulging in convoluted post-rationalisations for their own intellectual inconsistency and reflexive conformity. They will attack you because you have not done the same and use as justification for their attacks that millions of people agree with them and not with you. Because, to the conformist, if everyone’s doing it, it must be right.
I’m afraid I’m just not built that way. :shrug:
No, your mistake is in believing that everybody else is like you and, as a consequence, their 'passion' is contrived. Not everyone chases intellectual consistency, particularly when it comes to something as spectacularly unintellectual as football.
You are not like other people. Ash explains the motivation for a lot of football fans beautifully above. THere is a genuine irritation in seeing those who clearly dont understand the game at all piping up with their nonsensical views but I would. Have thought an intellectual heavyweight such as yourself would be used to that.
No, m isn’t like other people. For a start he’s much brighter and thoughtful (not in the sense of being kind, natch) than other people. The fact that he cares about things like intellectual consistency irritates those who do, of course, but I think it’s a good thing. I don’t think he’s ever got a minute imagined other people are like him. He is very aware he is different.
Which is good. Who wants to be like ‘other people’, ffs?
I think there are millions of people whose loyalties to the england team are negotiable. This is why we keep hearing about the team 'reconnecting' with the fans. You have chosen to remove yourself from this because there are Spurs players in the team. I think your reason is a bit ****tish but I understand where you are coming from.
What I dont understand is why you are here issuing warnings to those who have gone the other way and embraced the side. Within the context of an AWIMB that you tend to dominate, THEY are the non-conformists. Bravo tot hem- and to me for being one of them.
I dont think an englishman supporting england at a world cup is a particularly good example of rank, unthinking conformity. Ash describes the benefits of being part of something bigger and it is tempting to get caught up in it rather than to sneer on the sidelines. I have tried both and dont feel terribly comfortable with either.
It can also be due to something more than your place of birth. I have a natural affinity to an english style of football as I think most of us do. I quite like seeing lads from Rotherham crashing into silky Colombians. Its fun!
I will give you the Norman Tebbit bit. Glad to see that even you are finally realising what a complete and utter ****ing **** Norman Tebbit was :)
There are plenty of intellectual pursuits in life but very few people consider football to be one of them. Surely his logic is flawed as well- surely he doesn't hate all of those england players and, if so, why?
I mean, I hate some Arsenal players. Should I want Arsenal to lose??
The ‘warning’ was by way of a joke, p. Exaggeration for comic effect, sort of thing. I do it rather a lot - I’d have thought you might have noticed by now. :shrug:
And I’m afraid that when I hear people go on about a desire to ‘be part of something bigger’ I tend to think it’s just a touchy-feels way of saying that they like to go along with the crowd. Fair enough and good luck to them, but I don’t and never have. I’m not one of life’s joiners, p. By which I don’t mean I’m bad at carpentry - although I am that, too.
I dont particularly like any of them but I did find something to admire here and there. Ashley Young desperately trying to struggle through extra time so he could take a penalty; Raheem Sterling constantly looking to run beyond the back four constantly despite being horribly low on confidence; even Harry Kane's ice cold stare as he waited nearly five minutes to take that penalty against Columbia.
Of course I dislike them and their clubs but I am able to see beyond that for a few weeks every couple of years. It helps that I dont absolutely despise any of them the way I did with John Terry.
Either way, intellectual consistency is pretty dangerous. You hate Harry Kane I presume? If he signs for Arsenal next week, what do you do? Rationalise it on account of the move? Continue to hate him?
The basic intellectual outline here is that you hate them because they play for Spurs. Now they are playing for a different team. You may choose to continue to hate them but it does not flow logically from the premise. Its a choice, and good luck to you.
Oh, if they leave Spurs and join another club, I hate them less, certainly. I hate Kyle Walker about 15% less now that he plays for City, for instance.
And the thing is that they are still Spurs players when they’ve got an England shirt on. Spurs pay their wages and it is to Spurs that they return when the World Cup’s over. Prancing around in an England shirt for a few weeks does not changes their Spursness for me.
My wife occasionally requires me to attend social events and I’m afraid it now causes me to behave quite badly. I will sulk for days beforehand, building to a crescendo of petulant resentment that almost always culminates in a row. And then we’ll get there and I’ll be sweetness and light, of course, as the muscle memory of sociability kicks in.
I’m not proud of it, but I do just hate it so much these days. :-(
To be fair, Darren Anderson rarely actually played for Spurs.
I dont really care. I hate Spurs. I hate whoever pulls on the shirt and I hate them because they are wearing it.
As soon as they are not, it doesnt bother me. And I liked that England side under Venables and Hoddle. Even with Gary Neville in it.
Actually I did still support those teams full of those over-hyped thundercùnts. At least a bit, but there's a difference between having reservations, which might lead to quietly being indifferent about their results and success, and loudly calling for their defeat and trollishly revelling in it when it happens, and issuing proclaimations against those who have supported them (albeit in your case, I understand, in some jest). Monty's claims of intellectual consistency are at best misguided and at worst non-sensical but others have worked through that one.
I certainly respect your sense of non-conformity, as something of a non-comformist myself when it comes to certain matters of national pride (where we will often disagree), but I do generally support English and somtimes British sport as a default position - as my local team in international competition, even though I have much admired football teams from France, Germany and elsewhere in the last couple of decades. I have pride in my support for Arsenal because of family roots in both Woolwich and Islington, and without local support where would many teams be? I'm not saying that supporting England at football should be compulsory or expected, just that there's no need to go too far the other way and cùnt people off who do, and rub their faces in England's inevitable defeat when it happens.
Slight aside: I remember the Septic Arsenal blogger 7amkickoff (who sometimes writes some good stuff tbf) doing a piece about how someone he knew over there was supporting Leicester in their season of glory, and how he could say nothing to suggest that supporting Arsenal was a good idea, because Leicester were, at that moment, better than us. 7amkickoff is what you might call a leftist internationalist who seemingly despises the 'parochial/chauvinist' notions of both international competition and support for a local club team. What he didn't seem to grasp was that if everyone only supported the best teams, then why would any of the other teams even exist? I wanted him to understand that some of us support Arsenal because of geographical and family connections to the club, and even if/when we are shít, the club will get new fans because of these historical and geographical connections.
I wasn't getting all Norman Tebbit btw, not least because you strongly identify as English and support England at cricket :-)
And please don't claim to have 'won' a debate before it has finished. There's a good chap. :thumbup:
Speaking of these connections. Did you notice Danny Bakers recent tweet on the subject ?
https://twitter.com/prodnose/status/1017180979411243009
:hehe: An interesting contribution to the debate but one doesn't have to be quite so fundamentalist about it. I'm not schlepping down to Charlton every other week when I can just stroll down the Holloway Road.
But then again, why else would anyone support Millwall?