Boo!

Well I woke up this morning and lasts nights game didn’t look any better in the cold light of day. Frankly, it was absolute shit, possibly the worst England performance I’ve ever seen. Wayne Rooney can complain all he likes but if the fans can’t boo that, they can’t boo at all. It felt bad enough watching it on TV but if I’d spent a couple of thousand pounds flying over there, I might well have felt compelled to boo.

After all the preparation. After flying out the correct food. Fabio making sure there’s no butter on the plane. (Could England have played any worse if they’d spent the last two weeks eating nothing except butter?) After Franco Baldini flew out weeks before the world cup started to measure the length of the grass at the training ground. After paying Fabio Capello six million pounds a year. We get that? Against Algeria, statistically the twenty-third best team in the tournament. Well look out because next up are the twenty-second best team so it’s only going to get harder.

The question is how else do the fans express their displeasure at an inept performance? It’s easy enough at home. We just turn the TV off or over. Godfather Part Three was on the other side and there could be no more eloquent statement of someone’s unhappiness than a preference for watching by some margin the worst Godfather film rather than England at the world cup. When you’re in the stadium, it’s a bit more difficult. I guess you could tut in unison. Or turn your back on the team as they trudge off. Give them the silent, sulky treatment. Wayne Rooney would ask the fans what was wrong and they’d reply “if you don’t know, we’re not going to tell you”.

In the end, nothing is more eloquent than a boo. The difficulty is that a boo implies a lack of effort and I don’t think that was the case last night. Of course they tried. Wayne Rooney was obviously having a mare but he kept running and he kept wanting the ball. Same with Steven Gerrard. Some nights, things just do not go your way. But is that grounds for booing?

Partly, it’s because everybody watching had dreams of being out there on the pitch, representing their country at the world cup. And we never got the chance to do it. And they did get the chance and they’re making a complete pigs ear out of it. We feel let down. We feel that they’re wasting their talent in a way that we wouldn’t do if we were the ones who had it.

Anyway, it’s done now and I'm starting to feel better. Yes, that’s two hours of my life that I’ve given to that football team that I’ll never get back. And what’s more, I’ll give them another two hours next Wednesday. And hopefully some more time after that. That’s the trouble. I have no choice. I’m a fan. Of course I’m sorry the team felt upset at the fans booing. But the team has to understand that the fans felt upset at the way the team played. So let’s call it even and see if we can all get on a bit better next week. Because we’re in the knock out stages a week earlier than we’d hoped and if we don’t all pull together the boys are coming home.

Three things before I go. Firstly, as bad as we were I thought Algeria defended very well. Secondly, if we beat Slovenia by a decent margin, we’ll end up top of the group. And thirdly, it could be worse. We could be France.