The football season lurches into its final week, with Arsenal, the newly-crowned champions of England, trying to win their first Champions League trophy. But there will be no summer-long reprieve from the round ball game. A World Cup begins next month in North America, and dozy folk who fail to pay attention may hear a knock on the door at midnight. Only 48 teams this time. What fun.
If there’s a World Cup you can bet your last farthing there will be a ‘conversation’ about ‘national identity’. The BBC have already cleared their throats, with a four-hour adaptation of James Graham’s stage play, Dear England. That’s three hours too many.
Meanwhile David Baddiel, the comedian-philosopher, has launched a six-parter on Radio 4 called Sixty Years of Hurt – 60 years, that is, since England won their only World Cup. Baddiel co-wrote a song for the 1996 European Championship which measured ‘30 years of hurt’, so only one word requires revision.
Fingers on the buzzers, therefore, to spot the jargon and self-congratulatory twaddle favoured by the faux-patriots of television. In the realm of replica shirts and twirling scarves the game is always ‘beautiful’, and ‘Ingerland’ always ‘we’.
In the realm of replica shirts and twirling scarves the game is always ‘beautiful’, and ‘Ingerland’ always ‘we’
