le_magnifique
New Member
- Nov 3, 2004
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Spurs: more important than England
I’ll generally watch any football that’s on and was genuinely annoyed that I missed a Championship game on the BBC last weekend, despite the fact that just three days later I can’t remember who the two teams were. One of them, I think, might have been Swansea City.
Tonight, though, England take on Denmark in an international friendly fixture, and I’ll be elsewhere. Plenty of England fans are committed enough to spend the time and money to travel abroad in midweek to watch what will, it seems, effectively be international equivalent of an experimental Carling Cup team, but I suspect I’ll actually end up doing the hoovering. Honestly. And while I do generally admire the commitment evident in that hard core of away support, I suspect it’ll be a game I’d turn over on the TV.
England are a fairly dour, workmanlike side at the best of times, and the expected pairing of Jack Wilshere and Frank Lampard not only sounds unbalanced and a little too open, but also manages to combine two of the figures who, in all of the modern game, I despise the most. And that’s a real bone of contention: I object to being expected to feel some sort of affinity with a mish-mash of Aston Villa, Manchester City and United players, but all the more so when men like these are in the team.
An example: watching Portugal knock England out of Euro 2004, I was delighted to see a Sol Campbell goal rightly disallowed. I couldn’t take pleasure in football rewarding him, of all people. Minutes later, Helder Postiga, at the time a Tottenham player, jumped highest to head home the winner. I was delighted for Postiga, if still ambivalent towards the eventual result.
You see, I fell in love with football, and, soon after, with Spurs, for the game’s beauty and unending capacity to entertain. No team embodies that thirst for glory, that desire to play the game the right way more than Spurs, I thought, aged eight and inspired by the effervescent Paul Gascoigne.
Since then, though, my allegiance to my beloved Spurs has changed the way I watch football matches: it’s not always a case of “may the best team win”, but which result, if any, would benefit my club. Birmingham’s stodgy, uninspiring draw with Manchester City, then, or Liverpool’s surprise victory over Chelsea, or even Wolves’ win over Manchester United, were things to be happy about, if not beautiful games or ones where fortune smiled on the supposedly “better” team.
On the rare occasions I can be totally neutral, I love to watch a good game. Portugal vs. Argentina, then, or France vs. Brazil would be exciting viewing tonight. But Capello’s England play a stodgy, workmanlike 442 without a natural left winger. I watched them take on Algeria and won’t sit through any more of that.
Here’s the bit that makes me unpopular in pubs on nights like tonight, though. In competitive football, I actually want England to lose. Delighted as I was for Jermain Defoe to score against Slovenia, my dream result would have had JD find the net twice and England be beaten 3-2. The extra rest that Defoe, Aaron Lennon, Peter Crouch and Michael Dawson would have had would, for me, far outweigh the importance of seeing the country progress to the knockout stages.
And, let’s face it, what would that team add to the World Cup? Didn’t everyone want Greece knocked out of Euro 2004 as soon as possible? Having watched almost every game of the Euros that year, I was desperate not to have to suffer them again. It’s the same with England: they’re much too negative to be any fun to watch, and run the risk of injuring or exhausting our players. If it’s better for England to be knocked out early, then so be it, especially when the play-off against Young Boys was so soon after the World Cup.
When it comes down to it, I watch every game as a Spurs fan unless there’s no relevance to us at all. Watching Barcelona crush Real in La Liga, I was a neutral. But had they played each other in the Champions’ League I’d have been willing on Real, just a little, because I’d sooner us face them than Barca.
Manchester United announced today that Nemanja Vidic had been withdrawn to keep him safe for the derby against Manchester City. Vidic’s presence has become all the more important as Rio Ferdinand is injured. Rio’s injury, of course, means that Michael Dawson is all the more likely to start, and we Spurs fans will have to hope that he doesn’t pick up an injury like the last time he played for England. With him, and with Jermain Defoe, for the whole season, who knows where we’d be? It’s safe to say that JD would have scored a Premier League goal by now. He’d just got a hat-trick for England.
If United can pull their players out of friendlies, or, as they often do, encourage them to retire from international football entirely, then I’d much sooner that we did the same. Watching Rafael van der Vaart this season has been an absolute joy, but he hasn’t been fully fit since he’s been here, and how could he have been, having played in the World Cup all the way to the final? His being in and out of the team for fitness reasons can’t have helped. Luka Modric and Gareth Bale, by contrast, have arguably been in the form of their careers having had the summer off.
This week a young Tottenham player became the latest one to be selected to represent his country, a moment that many who follow the game usually describe as “the pinnacle of any player’s career”. If Kyle Walker can add some width and pace and penetration to the England team then they might just be worth watching, and being rated as England’s second-best available right-back is an honour, of course, and one he fully deserves, having played extremely well for QPR and Villa this season. I’m delighted for him to reach a landmark moment in his career. But these days the Champions’ League is probably more demanding.
The fact remains, though, that it’s still only really one man’s opinion: I’d have thought that featuring at right back in the PFA Team of the Season might be more of an honour than getting a game tonight. If Joe Hart can be the Premier League’s best goalkeeper for a whole season and then watch the World Cup from the bench as he did, and then dip in form like he has and find his way in to the team, or if Joey Barton can maintain the form that he has shown all season and not get a look in at all, is it really such a huge honour? He must surely be ahead of Lampard and Wilshere on form, so why does Barton not start? What does Roger Johnson need to do to earn his first cap?
Try as I might, I can’t see this game as important or exciting, but only as safety risk for the players that we have involved. I’d love them to play well and enjoy themselves, but I’d sooner they were having a well-earned night off. In the same way that I'd be delighted to see Arsenal, Manchester City and Chelsea be taken to a replay in the FA Cup, I'm keen for Nasri, Tevez and Terry to be playing every international fixture they can: particularly away games.
Ok, so that's petty. Playing for England, and the focus that players put on it, though, does put Spurs second in some players' minds. Sven Goran Eriksson told an undecided Sol Campbell that his international ambitions would be better served playing for a club who were regularly in the Champions’ League. He also encouraged Jermain Defoe to drop deeper and to curb his poaching instincts a little to benefit the team. Defoe’s all-round game improved, but, at the time, the shape of our team changed ever so slightly due to JD’s desire to show Sven he was more than just a fox in the box. JD still didn’t get picked, and we all know what happened to Campbell. It wasn’t all been down to England, of course, but I’m sure it didn’t help.
At the same time, if Tottenham can benefit from other players’ international ambitions, then all to the good. Darren Bent was quoted as saying he hoped that joining us from Charlton would help him play his way in to the England team, and Jürgen Klinsmann returned to save us from relegation partly because he didn’t dare risk sitting on the bench in a World Cup year. For all that, though, the image of Gary Neville giving Michael Carrick a United shirt with his name on it while on England duty is difficult to take. It’s a rumour, as far as I’m aware, but I’m told that the United players wanted Carrick to join their club, and that Neville had “Carrick” printed on a red shirt and gave it to him. It’s enough on its own for to make me not want our players picked.
I rarely watch England anyway, but, with the risk of injury and of tapping up, and the players’ need for the odd rest, I’d sooner stop international friendlies altogether. Club has to come before country. It’s not like we’d be missing out on a great spectacle.
