World Cup post-mortems and misery

You look like I feel Roy...

When the draw was made, placing England in a tough World Cup group, qualification was by no means guaranteed.

When England lost their opening game everyone predicted they would get through the group.

When England lost their second game it was widely criticised as another terrible display by England at a major tournament, and when a few days later it was confirmed they were out, the post-mortems began.

These post-mortems, analyses and what essentially became a list of reasons we will forever be terrible at football, got exceedingly boring, exceedingly quickly, but that hasn’t stopped the end of the tournament bringing about even more of them.

All of them unoriginal, many of them unquestionably tedious, and plenty of them complete nonsense; and yet there they are.

People producing opinion as if it is fact is frustrating enough, but when there is an unspoken consensus of doom it is even harder to stomach.

Many criticisms are thrown at the English media, and focusing specifically on the sporting front, accusations of discrimination and bullying are often wrong.

For example, continually printing that Luis Suarez has been involved in another controversy is not motivated by racism or xenophobia, it is motivated by the fact Mr Suarez HAS been involved in yet another controversy.

The same goes for dear Sepp Blatter suggesting that our media is racist for reporting match fixing or corruption, no, wrong again, match fixing and corruption has to be highlighted by someone Sepp, otherwise what’s left of football’s integrity, after you’ve sold most of it in sponsorship deals, will disappear quicker than you can say ‘I’ve always been in favour of this goal line technology thing’.

One criticism that can’t be easily refuted is the tendency to be repetitive and unoriginal in the coverage of the England football team.

There will always be predictions of the team heading in to future tournaments, and they will always be highly speculative, and ultimately unhelpful and/or wrong.

So while the established press focus on why England still won’t win in Russia in 2018, It may actually be up to me, arguably the most miserable person in the universe, to provide some much needed light-heartedness.

Monday: Richard’s Alternative World Cup Awards (No sponsors have influenced final decisions)