Not sure why people are moaning we got out of jail. For all our

[Dorset Gooner]

Possession they had 3 clear cut chances.

[Luis Anaconda]

Mind you neither have we been lately

[redgunamo]

We should've.

[Steve Williams - gay for Mark Knopfler]

To be completely honest I watched the Coppa Italia.

[Luis Anaconda]

Shocking keeping for the winner

[Classic Jorge]

http://www.quickmeme.com/img/10/10f6431f6cc4fcc0ae251ee85da069f05061aa6cd52bb0f95c cfcdee06e117eb.jpg

[Classic Jorge]

http://www.whoateallthepies.tv/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/pirlo-brescia-500x620.jpg

[Berni]

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B6Ih1PCCIAAjGJ4.jpg:large

[Hillary]

[Steve Williams - gay for Mark Knopfler]

The young lad had put on his Arsenal shirt for the occasion and I still insisted we watch the other match.

[Classic Jorge]

Anything else you need exoplaining?

[Classic Jorge]

[Berni]

You'd need to take it to a ludicrous, overblown extreme for that.

[Classic Jorge]

[Luis Anaconda]

the guy is simply brilliant

[Classic Jorge]

I do love how we get beckham and they get Pirlo.

[redgunamo]

[Classic Jorge]

I just dont like the man, especially the fact he has no moral or intellectual integrity and is prepared to shill for whoever will add a couple of inches to the piles of money in his scrooge mcduck style money room.

[redgunamo]

He comes from the same *place* as you, doesn't he?

[Classic Jorge]

If anything he's a couple of social rungs above an urchin from the hood like me. Which isnt hard.

The point is, the Italians get an utter mensch like Pirlo - an artist, a pholosopher - and we get the walking billboard for china/qatar/whoeverispayingthemost like david. He's never displayed an original thought that wasnt devised in a marketing meeting.

[redgunamo]

he is exactly the sort who wasn't supposed to do well, the chaps who didn't care about books and school and all that rot and were only interested in playing football and following their dreams
:rubchin:

[Berni]

wealthy backgrounds who become footballers and are instead stuck with ill-educated, inarticulate plebs like Beckham is pretty delicious, j.

[Classic Jorge]

He's got a god given talent which would have made him as rich as croesus anyway. I dont resent his success, I resent his lack of ambition.

[Classic Jorge]

...books or have thoughts.

You're coming off as Sherwoodian here.

[Berni]

And the chances of some poor kid who essentially ceases his formal education in his early teens in order to pursue a career in football reading books or having thoughts are pretty f**king slim. I also tend to the view that reading books and having thoughts are things that raise you above being working class anyway.

It helps if your dad owns a f**k-off big steel company, I imagine.

[Classic Jorge]

And yeah, I know Pirlo's dad was into metal.

That's part of why beckham is so widely admired though, he doesnt get above his station and read books or have thoughts. He just merrily shucks and jives like a white uncle tom.

[Berni]

Besides, you didn't give it up to pursue something as all-encompassing as a football career. You auto-didacted, thus rising above the dross.

Beckham used his football talent and (arguably more importantly) his clean-cut good looks to make himself a fortune. He has absolutely made the most of what he has. The fact that he's not the brightest isn't his fault.

[Classic Jorge]

[redgunamo]

but his kids' most certainly will.

How's that for ambition.

[Berni]

Only on the left in this country could someone take such a thing as an insult.

[redgunamo]

He doesn't appear to have changed much at all, does he?

[Classic Jorge]

Jealousy, avarice, smallmindedness, voting Tory...

That wasnt what I was really objecting to though, it was more the "thus rising above the dross" bit and the idea that reading/thinking are mutually exclusive to being working class in general.

[Classic Jorge]

...now my kid is talking about wanting to go to the local private grammar.

12k a year :-|

[redgunamo]

who would like to consider themselves his social betters. We much preferred footballers, not to mention ex-footballers, when they struggled to make ends meet. The occasional wealthy superstar player was OK. But now that playing a couple of hundred games for Port Vale or someone sets them up for life and allows them to send their sons to Wellington, that novelty has worn off.

[Classic Jorge]

[Berni]

And I could counter every single one of those negative connotations with a positive: Decent, self-reliant, industrious, law-abiding, healthy, clean...

But reading is a transformative thing. The Labour movement knew that when it introduced public libraries. Reading and education are the surest ways out of the working classes there are. Reading, grammar school, university and before you know it, you're middle class. You don't do all that **** just to stay working class, ffs!

[redgunamo]

Men have to act like men and take risks and follow their dreams. And then be satisfied with the consequences of having done so.

[Classic Jorge]

If the sum total is to make you middle class and eschew ideas like sympathy, empathy or that things could genuinely be different or better then I'd suggest you were reading the wrong stuff.

Or, given how closely you guys seem to think it's linked to a formal education, maybe they made you read just the right stuff.

[redgunamo]

you can choose to make them so, if you really care to. *You* are responsible. There's no rule that says you have to change anything though. It's OK to just enjoy it.

[redgunamo]

Outside that rarefied company, he seems popular enough.

[Classic Jorge]

[redgunamo]

Unless, of course, he'd subsequently gone on to become a popular pundit

:homer:

[Classic Jorge]

[Berni]