England

[Section_31]

Depite my general apathy to the shower of shite and their fans that are the national team, reading the thread about national tournaments of the past I realised these feelings haven't always been there.

 

Despite my uncle's best efforts (he supported Scotland purely for Dalglish) I never went for all this 'I'm scouse not English' bollocks.

 

I remember being in tears watching Italia 90 (fair enough I was 10) but during Euro 96 and to a lesser extent France 98 I was right behind the team. I loved watching Shearer, Pearce Gazza and Adams.

 

I'm trying to trace the start of my apathy and I genuinely think it was when brand Beckham truly started to take hold, and the 'celebrity England fan' started to make an appearance. Seeing the likes of Zoe Ball and Sarah Cox in the crowd pretending they knew what the fuck is going on pissed me off, and now virtually all the players aren't worth supporting.

All that Wags bullshit from the last debacle was the final nail in the coffin for me.

 

What say you? Are you apathetic and if so why? Is it the fans or the players? Did it creep up on you or has it been there since word go?

[Rashid]

I really started hating them when all that racist abuse was dished out for Heskey and before that the booing of John Barnes. Team England is all about the shitehouse London press, Combat 18, NF, hooligans, lower league supporters and a circus that is no way as good as the hype. The Rugby lads make the footballers look like cunts too.

[Glen C]

I don't have a problem with the england national team. I enjoy watching them and always wish for them to do well...especially because gerrard is in the team.

[Section_31]

I really started hating them when all that racist abuse was dished out for Heskey and before that the booing of John Barnes. Team England is all about the shitehouse London press, Combat 18, NF, hooligans, lower league supporters and a circus that is no way as good as the hype. The Rugby lads make the footballers look like cunts too.

 

Fair point, but to be honest I don't associate the team itself with the fans. The fans are by and large cocks but that alone wouldn't make me stop supporting the side.

 

I think it's also the modern football age catching up with itself, I just can't imagine any of these stupid, I-Pod obsessed cunts going into battle in a final with a bandage around their head.

 

I genuinely wonder if, in five years, with Ferdinand Cole Rooney and Lampard gone I'll feel any different, who knows..

[Brownie]

I started getting wound up by it around 2004 when all of the hype was there regarding Rooney, Lampard etc.

 

I just wish the players would stop over-hyping themselves, and obviously the fans are all gobshites too.

 

At uni i'd have to put up with Ipswich fans telling me that Marcus Stewart should be in the England squad etc.

 

It's all a pile of shite really.

 

If things changed i'd probably be full of support like I was as a kid, but they never will.

[Eldrich]

The fans are by and large cocks

 

I cant cheer on a team containing any of Neville, Ferdinand, Fat Frank, Mongo and everyones favourite granny shagger.

[Joeys Pogo]

I think the "I'm a big scouser me so I hate England" shite is a bit forced sometimes

 

Personally I would rather England did well than not but it doesn't really affect me at all one way or the other when they lose - unlike when Liverpool lose and my missus says I am an even more miserable fucker than usual

 

I agree the WAG nonsense is just another reason to shake your head at modern society and its obsession with being famous just for being famous or being married to someone famous

 

I'll stop now I'm starting to bore meself again

[Spy Bee]

I'm a similar age as S31 and I feel almost exactly the same. The only difference is that I don't even care why I don't care. I don't think it has anything to do with me living in Wales either.

[Unrighteous]

I want England to 'reboot' their whole system. Hiring jokes like McClown and catering to the media is fucking stupid.

[Hooch]

I always say I'm not that bothered and then when the tournament comes round am well into it, and of course along with rest of the nation get let down badly. My mates are into this Scouse not English business but I aint, up to World cuo 98 I loved Internationals. Not sure what happened. One thing personally pisses me off is Gerrards treatment through his international career, doing Fat boy Franks donkey work while he takes pot shots, playing on the left, playing on the right, all to accomodate that fat twat, and then the captaincy. One things for sure in my mind, If Stevie was a cockney he would be full England Captain right now rather than mongo.

[Unrighteous]

I always say I'm not that bothered and then when the tournament comes round am well into it, and of course along with rest of the nation get let down badly. My mates are into this Scouse not English business but I aint, up to World cuo 98 I loved Internationals. Not sure what happened. One thing personally pisses me off is Gerrards treatment through his international career, doing Fat boy Franks donkey work while he takes pot shots, playing on the left, playing on the right, all to accomodate that fat twat, and then the captaincy. One things for sure in my mind, If Stevie was a cockney he would be full England Captain right now rather than mongo.

 

If Gerrard was cockney he would be full Captain, Lampard would be bench warming, hoping for a sniff and he'd get the praise he deserves in the media.

[Agent Smith]

When the tournaments come round I want England to win, but it doesn't really bother me if they lose. As I've got older, I've become less bothered about them. I think it's a north/south divide thing. The FA headquarters are there, the mainstream media and the new Wembley. It's all Londoncentric.

 

The media have played a huge part in this. God forbid David "sinner turned saint" Beckham be dropped despite form or Michael Owen or Wayne Rooney or...whoever the new media darling is. The FA and the media seem to want their "marquee" players rather than what's best for the team. Maybe I was naive when I was a youngster, but have the media always picked the team and were all the former managers just yes men?

[thechap]

A bloke I work with made an interesting point...

 

He is a Crewe Alexandra fan and, as he says, he never tastes success at all with them and will never see them win anything or lift a trophy. He is also enormously passionate about England.

 

As well as generally supporting England as this is his national team, he also says that this is the only chance of him tasting success with any team he supports.

 

And I can understand that. It got me thinking. A lot of Liverpool fans couldn't give two hoots about England. Not the majority but a lot. I think this is partly because they have tasted so much success with their club that they don't feel the need to also crave it with England. If Liverpool were a permanently Championship side, would so many of the England critics around now still be saying they hate England? I doubt it.

 

I don't buy this NF and Combat 18 bollocks - that's history now with football. You get England thugs no more than you get Dutch or Italian thugs so it's not an English thing. Some people barely need an excuse to bash all things English, and the fooball team is an easy target.

 

The press hype around England football is truly pathetic and moronic. However, being reasonably intelligent, I don't watch, read about it or listen to it. I just watch the game.

[Liquid football]

The press hype around England football is truly pathetic and moronic. However, being reasonably intelligent, I don't watch, read about it or listen to it. I just watch the game.

 

Exactly - i think the press have too many people by the balls. If england weren't in the papers so much, less people would be so negative about them. The superfans and the haters are essentially 2 sides of the same coin. Don't get me wrong - i know there's probably a couple of idiots in the team but that's always been the case. The only thing that's changed in all this time is level of press coverage involved and what we're seeing is a reaction to that.

[philyhamann]

I agree with a lot of people in this thread, I think around 98 I really stopped supporting.

[Mendoza]

i hope England qualify.

[Ian Sea]

It must have been about 2000 when I realised that i couldn't wasn't bothered by England. I definitely supported them in the '98 World Cup (I wagged school to watch the first game) and I followed them in the start of the qualifying campaign for the next European Championships but by the time Keegan had took over and was picking people like Phil Neville, Steve Guppy and Kevin Phillips I just lost interest. The 2000 tournament just alienated me even more as it was the first that I watched in the pub and I became more aware of all the dickheads who follow England. All this "no surrender" shite and the little flags flapping on cars, it's just not for me.

 

I do still watch the games (it's football after all) and will talk to my mates about the state of the national side for hours at a time but I genuinly don't care whether they win or not. Obviously I want Liverpool players to do well but they don't have to be English for me to want that.

[BRANDS]

I got into an arguement with the brother in law over this on saturday hes a newcastle fan, i said i was gutted russia didnt win and he went mental - i tried to explain that not qualifying would be good for england as

a) all the cockneys would have to book new holidays

b) the fa would have to have a hard look at themselves for 2mins!

C) a proper manager would be appointed

d) the current squad would have to be broken up and rebulit

e) the obvious supporting chelski, Neville line

f) the footy they play is crap

 

he was having none of it- i tried to explain when the tournaments came I got into it - purley for the beers hot weather and all days sessions - this only stoked the fire more, so to end the arguement i pointed out that england was for small clubs who never got into europe or had no chance of winning trophies ....dinner was in ate in silence!

[teedeepee]

Personally, I would love England to do well but it would be something of a double edged sword. The problem, I think, starts with the press / pundits holding up players like Ferdinand, Lampard, Gerrard, Terry etc. as world class, week in week out on MOTD and Football First. The trouble is that players have to be either world class or shit; there just doesn't seem to be any middle ground. Hyperbole sells papers I suppose. The knock on effect of this is that it creates a false expectation regarding the performance of the National team. We go into every tournament / group with the press saying that if we don't win the tournament or stroll through the group then we'll have failed.

Now, this then creates a climate whereby fear of failure overrides the glory of success. You can see that almost all the time that we're in posession the players are more concerned about not making a mistake than in actually making something positive happen. Under this atmosphere, the players simply don't perform to the levels that they acheive at club level.

This makes watching the National team more of an ordeal than a pleasure; the expectation coupled with the disappointment of a crap performance has left me and clearly thousands of other people ambivalent about the teams results.

The double edged sword of the success would of course be the sickening sycophantism of the press afterwards.

[G Richards]

There's something on it so I'll be watching with interest tonight. For the most part, England games fail to set the pulse racing - not only in terms of quality of performance, but also in terms of quality of opposition and overall 'bigging up' of what is usually a non-event.

 

Tonight there is something on it, so it will be more interesting than the norm.

[stringvest]

The England team always manages to be less than the sum of its parts, which surely is an indictment of the management. Still, I hope we go through, despite not thinking much of McClaren as a manager.

[keysaint]

I'm not a big fan, will watch the bigger games as i do enjoy supporting the same team as good mate's of mine who support other teams.

[Elmyn Noos]

I cant cheer on a team containing any of Neville, Ferdinand, Fat Frank, Mongo and everyones favourite granny shagger.

 

So if one of them signed for Liverpool you'd support a different team?

 

I never used to give much of a monkeys about England, but I do now. I don't pretend to know any of the players (including ours) personally, and when they pull on the England shirt, they play for England, not their clubs.

 

I do understand people that aren't really bothered, but I tire of the shit reasons I hear for hating the national squad. Often it is under some delusion that they have a personal dislike of the players they don't know personally, often it is just to big themselves up as club supporters because supporting two clubs that will never play against each other is beyond their tiny minds and they feel it somewhat dimishes their LFC superfan status.

 

All the peripheral shit that attaches itself to the national team is there anyway. It is not caused by England having a national team. They are a natural choice for the far right elements although thankfully we don't see as much trouble as we used to. As for the fans, a quick browse through this very forum will show that every club has its small minded ignorant idiot fringe. England is certainly not exclusive in that respect.

 

I'll be cheering for England tonight. I don't like McClaren, and I do cheer a bit more for Gerrard than the others, but I want them to win, and if they do, I'll be heading off to the tournament next year - if only because the World Cup in Germany was totally fucking ace.

[RedinSweden]

I always support England. I think McClaren is crap. Hopefully we will qualify by cush a small margin that he will be sacked. More likely, the FA wil say "see, told you he was up to the job".

[Section_31]

I always support England. I think McClaren is crap. Hopefully we will qualify by cush a small margin that he will be sacked. More likely, the FA wil say "see, told you he was up to the job".

 

Yeah that's the worry, he's probably the worst England manager in living memory IMHO. He wouldn't look out of place as a politician or the head of a major bank, trying to bullshit his way from one disaster of his own making to the next.