 I skipped a review of the last England game, as I just wasn’t that motivated to write one.
Not being a professional journalist, I’m not paid by the word and nor do I have a deadline. And I simply didn’t care very much when England qualified for the knock-out stages. As an event it was unremarkable in that a supposed footballing powerhouse defeated a relative minnow.Unfortunately for England, they’d hardly presented themselves as a powerhouse, and the interest was if they’d actually be able to win or if they’d completely self-destruct and disappear without troubling the knock-out stages.
Expectations were thus low. Although the uncharitable might say realistic. However, England did manage to achieve victory, despite a very cagey end to the match, and a victory which allowed the nation to continue to revel in the delusion that England were potential contenders for the trophy. There simply wasn’t anything to write about.
No matter how you slice it, Germany were always the favourites. Forget the “experience” (of losing) being the equal to youthful German legs and ball control. England had played between competently and utter farce in their earlier games – which is hardly a solid foundation to take on our nemesis.
What was depressing was just how utterly poor England’s defence performed.
The campaign had so far been marked at the impotence of England’s attack. The defence hadn’t looked too bad, although I had previously said via Twitter that Terry just looked old and lumbering in the Slovenia game. This was against the common wisdom of the pundits. I’m sorry, but acting like a human shield doesn’t impress me. Pace, ball control and prediction impress me. If I could get a hundred thousand a week for being prepared to take a football to the face or body, then sign me up please. However, I think my perceptions were confirmed by this game. Even to a non-football fan such as myself, it was obvious that the defence was just horrific and beyond explanation – the Germans could almost take a shot on goal at will on the counter-attack.
Lampard’s disallowed goal was of course unfair. It allowed the little-Englander in the nation to rise up in indignation. It’s likely that 2-2 would have changed the poise of the match, but equally it was unlikely to have changed the end result. England simply couldn’t cope with the German attack. The Germans simply backed off in the last twenty minutes and avoided yellow cards, injuries and other potential impediments to a harder match down the road. England were just poor. The end scoreline was more flattering that it should have been.
It’s been amusing in the days since this game – this write-up has been posted some days after – to watch the knives come out for this bunch of under-performers and their very, very, very highly-paid manager.As I said in an earlier commentary, I don’t see how that sort of money is justified. It’s pretty obvious to the man in the pub, give or take five players out of a squad of twenty-two, just which players should have been taken and which team should have played, and pretty much in what formation. This all looks like a very nice jolly for Capello to me.
It is time to junk all the players and start again. They obviously are either on the wrong side of their careers or are just serial under-achievers, who choke on international pressure.
To finish my football commentary career: “You don’t win anything with kids”. Well, kids would have done better than this rabble. Watch the Germans – they’ve got as good a chance as anyone to win it, hunger, speed, the idealism of youth. Against lumbering experience, that’s going to win every time.
 In truth, the race was better than I was expecting – given the processions since it’s inception. The race has been historically billed as Monaco-lite, but even that description is far too flattering. Some interesting scenery, but it’s merit is brutally exposed with Canada and Silverstone either side of it’s calendar position.
Of course, what made the race interesting was Mark Webber having a total brain-farct and sliding down the order inexorably from the green light and then burying his Red Bull deep into the tail of Kovalainen’s Lotus, getting big air and flipping for good measure.
Horrific looking, but no issues with injury – safety car came out and all hell broke loose.
I said before the race that Button wasn’t likely to improve in the race, but he took the best advantage of the safety car to dive into the pits first, and consequently get out first without being impeded by the melee in the pit lane. Not so fortunate were the Ferrari’s who racked and stacked and dropped to the dull end of the order.
It was rather pathetic to hear Alonso on the car-to-pits radio crying about Hamilton, painting him with a false moustache and cackling as he sped past the saftey car and hampering our hero unjustly. Subsequent overhead pictures showed that Hamilton had indeed broken the letter of the law by a fairly small margin, a margin which he would have found it quite difficult to see from the cockpit, but it was obvious that it was hardly Hamilton putting his foot down to get ahead of the safety car. Either way, Alonso would have still been down in ninth. Just behind Hamilton.
I’m surprised that the Ferrari made the finish, the amount of tears which must have been shed into the electrics.
But the angst did get Hamilton a drive-through as a consequence, which ruined a chance to take on Vettel for the win – although Valencia being Valencia an overtake wasn’t likely. Hamilton was fortunate that the penalty was delayed, and quite significantly delayed, or he would have rejoined the meat of the race behind Button but the end result was probably a fair reflection of the intent of the “crime”.
Kobayashi stayed out and delayed Button – it was obvious that Jenson was driving to a fuel map, and didn’t have a realistic chance of overtaking. Kobayashi has been wild in braking zones so far, so one suspects that even if there was a marginal overtaking opportunity, then it would have ended badly. It wasn’t the most satisfying of pursuits to see Button quite obviously cruising round on the gearbox of the Sauber, but you could certainly see the logic. As soon as Kobayashi got out of the way then the hammer went down and the potential speed was quite obvious, if ultimately a little futile and worthless.
It says something about Alonso’s mental state that he was more concerned about Hamilton being punished, than his own race – which certainly hadn’t improved in the following thirty or so laps. It was therefore satisfying from my perspective to see Kobayashi overtake the Ferrari after exiting from his late pit-stop, perhaps due in part to new tyres but mostly because Alonso was asleep. Tyres or not, there should be no way through on this track.
Vettel took an easy win due to the chaos behind. Hamilton looked the fastest driver. Button was the most fortunate, after a particularly dreadful qualifying. The championship is rapidly distilling to these three protagonists.
Game on.
I have to confess that I’m not as on top of the European Grand Prix has I’d have wished to be – yesterday was largely spent putting four new corners on my Edition 30 at Costco.
I missed qualifying live, and thus a lot of the nuances of seeing all the laps in that and practice 3. However, it rather looks like the Red Bull’s have a bit of margin – which goes against the pre-race wisdom that this was going to be another McLaren benefit, although less acute than in Canada. The difference maker appears to be the updates brought by both Red Bull and Ferrari, which have bridged the anticipated performance gap. McLaren however are still pending their biggest update, that of the blown diffuser, for the next race at Silverstone.
Next race things may thus change again, but for now the Bull’s are in the ascendancy. And Alonso’s Ferrari also looks quite handy – Massa less so, but certainly not out of the running. Neither McLaren driver delivered to the potential of the car – both made mistakes on their last lap. Hamilton ended up third, but Button’s error was more costly and demoted him to seventh. As such, the grid order is slightly out of proper sequence but the performance advantages and deficits are so slender that I simply don’t see much overtaking or changes – unless tyres get destroyed. Which doesn’t look likely.
So, I’m expecting some minor changes at the start of the race and then for that order to be maintained. It’s looking to be a quite boring Grand Prix. Which is a shame, as this season has been top-notch so far, but we’ll find out shortly.
The first week of Wimbledon is now over. Federer and Nadal almost kicked the bucket, all the British interest evaporated other than Andy Murray, the women’s game is still largely forgettable but that’s not been the big story.
No, that’s been the three-day or eleven hour match, which finished 70-68 in the fifth set.
Much has been made of this on the physical level. John McEnroe was particularly gushing in his praise for the stamina of the players, and how this would result in a much better appreciation of tennis players as athletes. I’m not quite as impressed as a lot of people – not that I’d be up for doing this myself. Then again, I don’t make a living playing a game on a world tour and making a reasonable sum of cash for it. In other words, they are professionals.
After the match, the players proclaimed it as “the greatest match ever” – it was certainly the longest. It certainly captured the imagination of the public. It wasn’t Nadal v Federer Wimbledon 2008. It wasn’t rapier quality, but it was an awful lot of quantity. The match was effectively common fare – until neither player could put the match away. It was less about not making mistakes, more that the opponent was too tired to do very much about them.
However, you do have to say that whilst the men’s game was capable of this, you just couldn’t see the women’s game managing similar fare. To be honest, the women’s game is a joke until you get to the quarter finals. Service games are broken almost on a round robin basis. They can’t even play three sets in a Grand Slam at a reasonable standard, let alone the five of the men. But they get the same prize money strangely enough for sub-par entertainment.
The attraction, literally, is that a good number of them are quite pleasing on the eye and whom you wouldn’t kick out of bed for eating crisps. Whilst really condescending, it’s unfortunately true.
Originally, I meant to publish this on Sunday night – but it was a poor draft, and it slipped. Then work, and an all nighter in the datacentre got in the way, and it’s slipped until Wednesday afternoon.
Unfortunately, everything I was sarcastically predicting has already come true.
We, as in the United Kingdom, have the most prestigious tennis tournament in the world. Various other pretenders will make some noise about their relevance, quality and heritage. But let’s face it, The All-England Club is where it’s at. Those who are simply want to win it. A tennis career without conquering Centre Court is simply diminished.
Despite this national heritage, we’re universally poor at playing tennis to a high standard. For the last fifteen years we’ve had quality representation, but only in the singular. Tim Henman and Andy Murray have single-handedly kept British spirits in a state of mighty self-delusion. Greg Rusedski can hardly be called British – as soon as he opens his mouth that’s given away rather keenly, but he also played his part in the delusion by teaming with Tim Henman to represent the national interest in the Davis Cup, rising the previously forgotten heights.
Then their careers ended, and Andy Murray lost interest in carrying the hopes of a nation on his back – and simply turned it away from national representation. A bit “not-cricket” you have to say, and he’s done himself no favours in terms of hearts and minds, but it has finally brutally exposed just how shallow the tennis gene-pool is in Britain.
It’s been a running joke about the British interest at Wimbledon, and the second-round sweepstake on those managing to survive past their wild cards. My post would have predicted one – Andy Murray, with the rest swept aside. With the benefit of hindsight as I finish the post, only Laura Robson gave an additionally creditable performance. A likely female contender down the road to be sure. But that’s not now, and it will never be Davis Cup.
The LTA simply doesn’t have any clue on how to change the situation, other than spend money in new and increasingly impotent ways. Murray certainly was never part of the system. He’s earned his position in the world. The others, who have received wild cards virtue only of them being born in the country, have not only received free entry to the first round but the prize money associated with being there. Incredible. It just smells like the gravy train, and/or the LTA using these under-performers in some futile attempt to justify itself.
We run the greatest tennis tournament in the world. We have the worst tennis players in the world.
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