Albert Camus said Beware of Greeks bearing gifts

I'm making that up!

But I have a Philosophy Football T-shirt that says:

All I know most surely about morality and obligations, I owe to football

I would twist that and say much about what I know about politics, I learnt from football.

Perhaps more specifically, the way the media covers football and politics. Focusing on personalities rather than what they do.

I go back a long way. I remember Don Revie and Jim Callaghan. I was born under Harold Wilson and Alf Ramsey.

They're all the same...Thatcher, Greenwood, Robson, Taylor, Major, Hoddle, Blair, Erikson, McLaren, BrownReidMillibandAlexanderMcDonnell...

They arrive in a blaze of glory, the new Messiah, Churchill, and Big Phil rolled into one. A new start, fresh hope for the country, at last a change to the tired old failed ways.

Then, bang! they are Judas Iscariot, Chamberlain and Hoddle combined. From extolment to excoriation. No balance applied along the way.

I mean we all hate Sven Goran Erikson as much as we hate Tony Blair, right?

Thank goodness Steve McLaren has ushered in a new era for English football. In fairness, the Guardian is fairly balanced (are their journalists those blog commenters on popular blogs that get orgasmic pleasure from yelling "First!". Not here. It's not difficult being first commenter here. Chunner, chunner)

Were he not so ambitious, Steve McClaren might almost wish that his career as England manager could end on the night it began. There cannot be too many nights better than this in his life. A 4-0 win, with all the goals struck by the interval, was the best result recorded by anyone in their first outing in the post since Walter Winterbottom's men crushed Northern Ireland 7-2 60 years ago.The hard-hearted will retort that it is merely England's best win since beating Jamaica 6-0 in June.

I can imagine the tabloid headlines tomorrow: Shagger McLaren Beats Greeks; Saint McLaren Urns Greek Victory; Princess Diana Anniversary Not Far Away; London Man in Saucepan Boiling Over Disaster.

Come June, there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth as we scrape a nil-nil draw away to Estonia after the team, again overpaid and useless, go on a drunken rampage through the streets of Tallinn. I shall remind you when it happens.

Although, funnily enough I was seriously thinking of giving up blogging until I saw David Cameron and thought "I'll blog this..." So in a very real sense, David Cameron is my new blogging muse and it can be safely said that this post on football has been inspired by politics, quite a reversal from my opening Camusian assertion.

Comments

[jamsodonnell]

I'd forgotten about Philosophy Football there is a brilliant good soldier svejk t shirt on it. I must have it!