Listening to the radio and TV this morning I must be the only English resident not queuing at the doctor's in a state of near collapse asking for large quantity of industrial strength Prozac. The cause of this national depression is, of course, England's loss to Croatia in the last of their qualifying games for Euro 2008. I'm rather surprised England has even entered anything "euro". We have spend the last 10 years keeping out of the the Euro .
I'm over the moon England will not be taking part.
There'll be no raggy St. George flags sprouting from car windows. I won't have to listen to so-called experts tell me just how good the national team are until the moment arrives they are knocked out. Hopefully there'll be no xenophobic headlines in the tabloids referring to frogs, krauts and dagoes. and summoning up the Dunkirk spirit.
But most of all, I'm happy for Switzerland and Austria who will not be invaded by drunken English hooligans supporters, whose idea of following their national team is, in chronological order, drinking large amounts of booze, singing nationalistic songs then pissing and vomiting in the mediaeval centres of their towns.
I suspect last night, the wind that ruffled the Rambler's curtains when the referee's whistle blew time on England's woeful performance, was the sigh of relief from the inhabitants of Salzburg, Vienna, Klagenfurt, Innsbruck, Geneva, Zurich, Basel and Berne.
In Spain the word 'hooligan' is used specifically to refer to a British football supporter. It's not just the English, as I have pointed out:
http://lavengro.typepad.com/lavengro_in_spain/2007/11/football-news.html
Posted by: Peter Harvey | 22 November 2007 at 04:13 PM