12/22/24
June 21, 2002
"They were better than us, which is the difference." Sven tells it as it is. Sorry, but I thought England at least deserved our own thread. Just woken up, drunk, and with tears running down my face. Portugal 2004 anyone?
The closest equivalent is Canada and it's national hockey teams (of any level). Men's Olympic, Men's championship, Junior, Women's, Under-18..doesn't matter. When Canada sends a team to an international tournament, we expect to win. Everytime. Period. Anything else is a failure. Not a terrible failure (since Canadians are notorious for supporting "runner-ups" in other sports and being weirdly proud of it), but definitely a failure. It has to do with identifying with a sport as something we invented/perfected/dominated. I'm sure there would be equal teeth-gnashing if the USA lost an Olympic basketball tournament to (?), or lost a "World Cup" of baseball to the Dominican Republic.
posted by grum@work at 09:34 PM on June 21, 2002
I'm with Mert on this one. It's not like England didn't make a good show of it. They certainly showed that they're one of the best teams on the world. Is the problem that they lost, or that they lost to Brazil?
posted by Samsonov14 at 12:09 AM on June 22, 2002
Who has a problem? As Mr Erickson says, we were beaten by a better team. I'm just upset. 
posted by squealy at 04:14 AM on June 22, 2002
Oh, mert: It's English not British. But should I care?
posted by squealy at 04:27 AM on June 22, 2002
Look, it's not like Argentina last time when there was a sense of injustice. Had we drawn a different side in the quarters, we might have gone a bit further: but would being outclassed in the semis, or the final, have been any better? A year ago, no-one would have hoped for such a run in the qualifiers and the finals. There's only a little disappointment that it wasn't, in the end, ability that was lacking, so much as self-belief. It was as if the players had worked themselves up into thinking that they were up against the Brazil of 1970. And mert, like grum@work I don't think it's really so much about ethnic or cultural diversity, but rather the sense of football being 'our' game. I certainly don't look at the England team and see something that's ethnically or culturally 'homogenous'. Nor did I see a white-bread, white England dancing in Trafalgar Square last Saturday. And what's ironic is that the most obvious elements of "more ethnically diverse, less culturally homogenous culture" will have been talking football, probably with each other, for the past few weeks.
posted by etagloh at 07:08 AM on June 22, 2002
grum: we've only lost in the Olympics once, and we're still gnashing our teeth over that one.
posted by tieguy at 09:34 AM on June 22, 2002
Nice link etagloh. Thanks.
posted by squealy at 01:20 PM on June 22, 2002
I'm surprised by how badly the Brits are taking this whole thing. As an American, I cant begin to understand the level of involvment and identification that the British people have with their national team. I guess we are a more ethnically diverse, less culturally homogenous culture, and a defeat does not reflect so directly on the whole of our ethnicity and heritage. If sports are a metaphor for war, the World Cup is the penultimate expression of tribalism.