Can a football team be judged by its followers? Probably not. Despite being told that it is a sad and unsportsmanlike thing to do, the England supporters in Wembley on Saturday booed their hearts out during the national anthem of Italy. There are those who say that this boorish behaviour only stiffens the resolve of those booed to win. I shouldn’t be surprised.
Despite the wonder goal at the very beginning by Luke Shaw – and it really was a wonderful goal – England managed to look cumbersome, uncertain – more the team that plans to blow-the-bloody-doors-off than an intelligent, skilled group of players working as one unit. Where the Italians stroked the ball around, the England team tended to boom the ball forward or make passes that didn’t always work.
And so came the penalties. Italy started appallingly, with their first penalty-taker failing to score. They redeemed themselves, they were made wobble again, but this Italian team is nothing if not resilient.
Inevitably, after the game, the England team was the target of criticism. Roy Keane was spluttering his indignation that the likes of Jack Grealish didn’t step up and take penalties, leaving it to raw youngsters like Saka, who predictably failed to score. To this Jack Grealish replied, saying he had volunteered but ‘the gaffer’ made the judgement. The gaffer had made the right decisions all along, and it was his call.
I don’t believe that. I can’t see Southgate leaving vital penalty kicks to young, untested players. Roy Keane doesn’t think that was the case either, otherwise he wouldn’t have made the criticism he did – he’d have been pointing the finger at Southgate, not Grealish. Southgate’s subsequent claim to be the one who made the decisions looks more like a manager trying to shield his shell-shocked team.
But what’s done is done. The England team must be hurting horribly today, but they’ve done at least one important thing: they’ve shown that they as a team think and act at a moral level far above that of their racist, dumb-as-a-dungheap followers.
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