According to England skipper John (do you know how much I earn in a week?) Terry, Jose Mourinho is the ‘stand out’ candidate for the next England manager. For once, RTG finds it hard to disagree with JT on that. Sadly, however, this is in the same breath as stating he would be willing to sit out the Switzerland friendly in order for David Beckham to win his (in JT’s own words) “very well-deserved 100th cap”.
Much has been said recently regarding the England football team and its current woes. JT’s ‘sincere’ offer undermines his position as captain of a failing football team as he is trivialising the whole wretched situation that we as supporters have had to endure. What exactly is he stating? Beckham is going to play centre half? If so then we definitely haven’t even begun to learn anything from our recent debacle. Why is a captain talking up a player who won’t have played a competitive match for over three months, and only a handful in the last six or seven? The truth is that this situation is not going to happen. So why bother saying it?
Could it be that in an effort to fill Wembley for what is now a meaningless friendly on February 6th, next year, the FA have decided to turn the event into some sort of football celebrity love-in rather than focusing on rebuilding a flagging side? Let’s face it, the economics of filling Wembley with thousands of toilet-licking teenyboppers make much more sense than trying to half-fill it with miserable, disgruntled England supporters, still smarting from the lack of competitive matches to look forward to.
There have been four previous winners of 100 or more caps for England – Billy Wright, Peter Shilton, Bobby Moore and Bobby Charlton. As RTG has stated before, David Beckham was once a very fine player. Unfortunately, you can count only a handful of world class performances he has made for his country; most notably, in his total command of the world cup qualifier against Greece, where his last minute effort secured automatic qualification to Japan 2002. It is hard to imagine him, however, in the company of these four greats and perhaps it would be better for the game if he stayed on 99 caps.
Reclaim the Game – The Week’s Events
- Call RTG cynical (and we are), but we believe that John Terry wetting himself and urinating on the floor on the eve of the important Croatia match was not caused by excess drink and exuberance. No, this was a carefully calculated publicity stunt for his rumoured new sponsorship deal with Pampers. OK….not strictly true…..it was Huggies. OK enough!
- Is it RTG’s imagination or has Richard Keys got even more vacuous in his summation of matches on Sky? He appears to take no account of the full 90 minutes and seems to refer constantly to his stock of clichéd points gleaned from the media, no matter what happened out on the field. As hard as Peter Beardsley tried to talk about the game last night (and as hard as we tried to understand the mumbling Geordie), Keys just kept bringing him back to, “Oh Arsenal, they play lovely football don’t they?”…..”Allardyce is under a lot of pressure isn’t he, Peter?”….”Pressure off Allardyce now Peter?”. Thanks Mr Keys but we learnt nothing about football from one of the game's greats thanks to your inane, stage-managed presentation.
- Gretna have made a brave decision this week to agree to postpone their SPL match with Rangers at the weekend to help Rangers’ preparations for their upcoming qualification decider against Lyons. Admirable though it is to see a nation getting behind its club teams in Europe, this adds a distinctly unfair advantage and sets a worrying precedent should the habit be adopted more widely.
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