Five Levels of Self-Delusion

 

I rather fear that England's football fans may be some of the most obnoxious and objectionable in the world. It is one of the reasons why I abandoned the country to set out on my globetrotting adventures 30-odd years ago.... and I have seldom been back since. But, of course, you can never completely escape them. In just about every sports bar I've ever visited in Asia, the most loudmouthed, offensive, unreasonable punter in there is almost invariably a Brit (in fact, 9 times of out 10, it seems to be a Spurs fan;... but that's another story). And now, of course, they're all over the online forums too.

It would have been nice to be able to enjoy a rare moment of success for England, the gruelling victory in the Azteca stadium yesterday morning, without having to suffer all of these dingbats crowing about how we trounced the home nation and it was a thoroughly dominating performance, and.... all manner of other horseshit. I even saw one poor lamb today averring that it was the best England performance in the World Cup since 1966; I can only assume that he's less than 30 years old and thus has nothing in his memory to compare it to. An important win is not necessarily the same as a great performance. (And, alas, all too often for us a great performance has not been rewarded with victory. Our defeats to Argentina in the 1986 quarter-final and to Germany in the 1990 semi-final were by far the best England performances I've seen in the tournament.)

Now, to be fair, I think this was much our best performance yet in this tournament (though that is fairly faint praise), and included many elements that should be greatly encouraging: Pickford emphatically getting his mojo back, Saka being fit again at last, Bellingham continuing to look as if he's a man determined to steal Messi's last Ballon d'Or. And our determination and discipline in defence was especially impressive, as we grimly clung on to our narrow lead with only 10 men. Many online commenters have also asserted that it was part of Tuchel's gameplan to surrender the bulk of possession to Mexico, confident that they weren't incisive enough to hurt us too much (that was surely the case in the opening period; but not thereafter - I fear they were just better than us at keeping the ball).

And I have an inkling that the manner of this victory, the huge flood of relief at having managed to pull it off in such demanding circumstances, may prove to mark a decisive momentum-change for us, giving us the emotional boost we need to kick on and play better, more successful football from here on. (Although, I am also anxious that our players won't be able to completely recover physically before our quarter-final against Norway. By the end of the game in Mexico City, both teams looked utterly, utterly knackered, and I really don't think any of them could have played 30 minutes of extra time. After all the thunderstorms in the vicinity earlier in the day, the humidity in the stadium was apparently up around 85%, and all the players were completely drenched, perspiration dripping off their faces, from the opening minutes. I think that might have been one of the sweatiest games of football I have ever seen!)

However, having given credit where it is due,.. I cannot countenance all of this absurd hyperbole that instantly sprung up around the game - how the result was so thoroughly deserved, how we had completely outplayed our opponents.

We did not. Mexico - even before Quansah's (entirely uncontentious) sending-off - had had the lion's share of possession. Overall, they saw twice as much of the ball as us, and created nearly five times as many attempts on goal (the majority of those actually before the sending-off; we contained their threat much better once we'd 'parked the bus'). But for some uncharacteristically 'off' finishing in crucial moments from Raul Jimenz, and a couple of absolute world-class saves from Jordan Pickford, Mexico might have won fairly comfortably. In fact, but for Jude Bellingham's astonishing last-gasp clearance when Cesar Montes had been presented with an open-goal opportunity at the far-post to equalise at 2-2, seconds before the half-time break - I feel fairly sure Mexico would have gone on to win, even without the Quansah sending-off.

Moreover, Nico O'Reilly was very, very fortunate not to have become our second sending-off, when he petulantly flicked out an elbow at Jorge Sanchez just before the second drinks break (it doesn't matter that it 'wasn't that hard', or 'barely made contact'; you can't usually get away even with making a gesture like that). And we clung on to our precarious lead by our fingernails for the whole of the last half-hour, resorting to a 5-4 low-block - and even taking Kane off in the closing minutes to bolster the defensive ranks even further.

And the thing that soured me most about our victory was that during that siege of our penalty area in the closing stages of the game, we resorted to peak Arsenal tactics of wrestling opponents in the box every time they had a set-piece delivery, practically ripping the shirts off their backs on a few occasions. We committed more than enough holding fouls to have conceded 2 or 3 more penalties, but the referee and the VAR team were mysteriously sleeping, and we were allowed to get away with every single one of them.

So, all this talk of 'deserved' and 'dominant' quickly began to rankle with me. You can celebrate a success without being dismissive of your opponent's performance in a game. If England lose a game in circumstances like this, we whinge about it for the next 50 years. So, it seems to me to be only fair to acknowledge that on this occasion our gallant opponents were somewhat hard done-by. Yes, we played well; but all the breaks went our way as well - and without that, we wouldn't have won.

After an hour or so perusing the Internet forums yesterday, I concluded that we could attempt a classification of just how out-of-touch England fans were being in their assessments of this game. So, I give you.....

The Five Levels of Self-Delusion 

(about the Mexico v England game)

Level 5: England fans who insist we must have been the 'better' team simply because we ended up with (narrowly) more goals. [Football 101: the final scoreline is not always an accurate indicator of desert.]

Level 4:  England fans who 'didn't see' any of the numerous holding offences we committed in the later stages of the match, simply because the BBC commentary declined to draw attention to them.

Level 3:  England fans who think Nico O'Reilly did nothing wrong - because the Mexican had it coming to him, or similar. ['Retaliation' is not a defence, lads.]

Level 2:  England fans who don't even think Mexico should have got the penalty that was awarded to them. [A 'thought experiment': imagine Harry Kane is in the opposition box, raises his leg high to meet a falling ball and gets there first, but a defending player behind him decides to kick the ball anyway and instead kicks the back of Harry's calf with full force. What would you say then? Eh, Mr Shearer??]

Level 1 (the most extreme form of this mania):  England fans who don't even accept the Quansah sending-off!! (They are depressingly numerous.)

It is astonishing and dispiriting how the environment of 'anonymous' discussion on the Internet seems to lead people into a total loss of any sense of objectivity. So many England fans are intent on spinning themselves this fantasy narrative about how this was the most wonderful, wonderful England performance ever and Mexico were hardly in the game. And they will rapidly get surly and abusive with anyone who rains on their parade by daring to point out any facts inconsistent with this comforting lie they want to keep on telling themselves.

All I'm arguing for is a little bit of balance and open-mindedness. I'm an England fan, I like to see us do well. I'm pleased that we have progressed to the quarter-finals. But I resist the pressure to buy into this absurd narrative that every important victory must also necessarily have been a flawless performance and our finest moment ever. There were still a lot of problems in this performance, and we've certainly had many finer moments. And I do find it difficult to exult about a victory in a game where we really should have had a second player sent off, and should have conceded another penalty.