Difficult to derail England hype train
SO, IT took a little over a week of the World Cup for the England hype train to go into overdrive.
After getting out of jail to earn a deserved win against a limited Tunisia outfit in their opening game, the English media managed to somewhat keep a lid on expectations, although they did dare to dream.
However, after a 6-1 pummelling of piss-poor Panama they’re suddenly capable of not only mixing it with, but beating, the best.
All of the talk emanating from across the Irish Sea during the build-up to the greatest football show on earth was about the sensibly low expectations that surrounded the English team.
This was a work in progress, we were told. A plan that could start to bear fruit at the next European Championships, or possibly at the World Cup in four years’ time. Now was time for gentle transition.
The pundits just couldn’t bite their tongues any longer though, with the usual suspects shouting words like ‘brilliant’, ‘exhilarating’ and ‘sparkling’ from the rooftops as the Three Lion brigade had Panama for lunch like the King of the Jungle preying on some helpless antelope.
Given what we’ve seen from some of the more fancied nations so far, there’s no reason England can’t go deep into the tournament, but surely the commentators should wait until they have played a team above pub league standard before thinking dreamily about the open-top bus, ticker-taped all singing, all dancing homecoming.
England certainly have some of the attributes that could put them in the reckoning - first and foremost a red-hot striker on top of his game in inspirational captain Harry Kane.
However, although their defence has yet to be seriously tested they’ve still managed to concede two goals against the minnows, while the suspicion is their midfield could lack both the steel and creativity to really trouble the big guns as the tournament hots up.
Who knows, maybe the unthinkable might happen and they won’t have to continue to constantly reminisce about their solitary World Cup triumph in 1966, something which generations of English have little or no connection to.
That said, us Irish are hardly the best placed to throw stones in that regard considering every significant anniversary of Houghton’s winner against the auld enemy or the victory over Italy in Giants Stadium is marked with multi-paged supplements in our national press.
Back to the here and now, and you can’t blame the England fans for allowing themselves to dream of ultimate glory; it’s only natural for supporters of any team with even the slightest chance of winning a competition to try to work out potential paths to the final and consider who they would need to topple along the way.
However, if the English do crash out in the similar dramatic fashion that we’ve become accustomed to over the years, the public and media shouldn’t then do a massive u-turn and kick them squarely between the legs when they’re down.
You can’t have the audacity to praise them as world beaters when they sweep past Panama, yet chasten them for being as useless as an ashtray on a motorbike if they fall to real global forces like Spain, Germany or France.
The past week has been a nice confidence-booster, but their World Cup only really begins now, starting with the group decider against a strong Belgium outfit and continuing into the knockout stages, which will be a proper test of their mettle and new-found swagger.
Thankfully manager Gareth Southgate seems to be one of the few who isn’t getting carried away with their promising start, at least publicly, highlighting the areas they have to work on, rather than gushing over bagging a glut of goals against cannon-fodder.
Gareth knows the score. He’s trying to keep the hype machine chugging along gently like an ancient steam train rather than a high-speed inter-city service.
All aboard!