
"Heroes?!"
Lazy, overpaid, nancy-boy chavs, more like.
The England football team will jet off to South Africa this year without the benefit of the traditional rousing official anthem, the FA has announced. The shock decision, which means our plucky lads will have to rely entirely on their highly-paid skills to secure World Cup glory, marks the first time since 1966 that fans have …
As someone with only a vague passing interest in football, I'm not really surprised. The last few official anthems have been as memorable as.... as memorable as.... hang on... you know... that one. You know, the song that wosstheirnames did.
An anthem needs to be simple, memorable and capable of being belted out at 400 decibels by pub-fuls of pissed fans. I can only think of two footie songs that fit that bill - Nice One Cyril[1] and Vindaloo.
[1] Ask yer parents, young 'uns.
They gave the UK - of which England makes up the major part - their top talent:
Tony Blair
Gordon Brown
Alastair Darling
Their MPs also gave the above their votes in order to pass legislation that was England specific - e.g. the introduction of tuition fees in English Universities.
They are very generous, so SuBo will no doubt be willing to assist England with a song.
... We'll have a bunch of over-paid prima-donnas prancing around whilst tedious commentators keep making references to a victory that was close on half a century ago and there won't be a crap song which will be instantly forgotten...
... Tell you what, I'll compose one, to be played on the world's smallest violin...
Jesus christ here we go. I don't even like football and I can't stand how much that ropey old nonsense gets wheeled out.
Admittedly I did let myself in for that one by actually reading the article, but come on it's like the fabled big red button marked "do not push". Before I know it I've clicked myself into the article and now I'm sitting here tapping away like some reactionary Daily Hate reader at the mere mention of the word "paedo".
*CRY*
That's sparked off my memory - could we just have a wider reissue of the Cuban Boys' "unofficial Euro 2000 anthem", aka Inertia Kicks, the dance-ish and decidedly low-distribution followup to Cognoscenti vs Intelligentsi (ie Hamster Dance :D) with the catchy strapline "losers, we're all a bunch of losers"?
It would be a good way to find out if our sports stars actually work on a solid Reverse Psychology basis. 30-some years of overwhelmingly positive songs have failed to relight the fire. Let's take the p*ss out of them and see if that gets them playing any better, if for no other reason than to prove the chanting fans wrong.
Or of course the Slade number, possibly in it's more recently rehashed guise by Grandad somebody and his son icantrememberhisname.
I'm no Prince of Darkness, Simon Cowell, but did no one in the FA realise that there was an opportunity to run a prime-time, phone-in, six-month-long, Saturday night TV 'talent' contest to find the 'best' team song?
ITV are gagging for content and cash right now and here was the perfect chance to fill more of our gutter-scraping tabloids with slebs.
England is only a region of the United Kingdom; it is not a country. Some of us live elsewhere in the UK and they are not "our boys".
As always, we pray that England win something, somewhere, sometime if only to avoid endless grainy pictures from 1966.
If you must have music to make them perform, may I suggest the "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies".
Lest we forget that England isn't the only nation that has given us appalling, cheesy football anthems, often embarrassingly remembered when the team comes home with nothing to show for their travels.
As for the poke about 1966, I entirely agree. I can only praise those that were involved in that win but, hell, it was a long time ago now and the closest that England ever got after that was the year of the "Hand of Sod" (which is another cliche that gets rolled out far too often).
Is it any wonder that this is the case when the teams at the top spend so much time and money on buying overseas talent and don't pay enough attention to the talent developing at grass roots?
As for the last English World Cup "anthem", as somebody already pointed out, "lukewarm" is probably better than it deserved.
Now i am Scottish but don't take this the wrong way because of that. I remember hearing once or twice or maybe a million billion times that England won the world cup in 1966. I really would hate for them to win it again (not because i'm Scottish, more because i currently have a will to live..) Any time England play anyone the commentator will talk about 1966 (**sigh**) - as if i really care.. Look at Germany, Italy and Brazil - how many times have they won the world cup? Do you think they bang on all the time in their own respective countries like they were THE only ones ever to win it??? I think not...
"marks the first time since 1966 that fans have not enjoyed a catchy soundtrack". Fans may have enjoyed a catchy soundtrack but it's almost certainly never been the official England song. I notice the way that you slipped in a reference to 1966 there. Since England have only ever won once and that was 44 years ago, there's really nothing to crow about. Italy and Brazil have won many, many moer times...
As for getting SuBo to record an anthem for them - she's not English. Of course, as we all know, everyone from England thinks that the rest of the UK is part of England. The Welsh, Irish and Scottish take a very different view.
"everyone from England thinks that the rest of the UK is part of England" ??
Are you talking about the same xenophobic English that I know? The English are the most exclusionary race on Earth. English people tend to think that people from the next town over are foreigners. We certainly don't count the Scots, Welsh or Irish in our numbers. Given the choice we don't even include those from Norfolk or Cornwall.
Maybe they'll get to the final this time. Capello looks like he eats babies for breakfast, and washes them down with hydrochloric acid and Swarfiga. Hopefully he's knocked some discipline into their haircuts and they'll play well enough to deserve being thought of positively.
Then again, drawing Belarus in the group stages... Gimme a break! I'm no great footie bod, but Belarus isn't a nation known for great football. It'll probably be another awful crapshoot.
Why are these guys paid so much again?