The world (England) expects - PICTURE SPECIAL!

I was going to twitter a couple of pictures this morning, but to be honest, the papers are packed with chest-thumping, miss-guided patriotic gold this morning.

Not sure about the first one.  Three footballing vampires and a lion?  I know we import some crap American comedies, but even ITV can do better than this, surely?

Ahh, the classic England football fan.  Rooney shirt?  Check.  The worst lager, cider and bitter brands known to man?  Check.  Asleep/fighting/slagging Rooney off by half-time?  Probably.

*Wipes tear from eye*

You've got to admire the effort put into this stuff.  Until you think that the artist instead could be painting the walls of a kitten orphanage or something.

Some readers don't seem too happy about the attached article either:

"Fancy having a headline ' Long to wayne over us' when the ignorant idiot refuses to sing the national anthem he should NOT be allowed to play for his country if he cant do it with pride like all the other countries do!" julie will 27/06/2010

You won't get a bloke slagging Rooney off in there, Jules.

Anyway, I'll sign off with a bit of class today: a poem by News of the World reader Mr Kovacki:

"You muppets, why would England win?
Not in a million year!
Was not Roni who fully fit last week too?
No offence but this English team should have nover gone to the 2nd round. They are very weak.
Come on Holland!" Moses Kovacki 27/06/2010

EASY

With only days until Wayne Rooney/ Fabio Capello / The English FA are blamed for yet another early football World Cup exit, it's worth revisiting the front, and back, pages of The Sun last December.
  
This was of course the time of the football World Cup draw for South Africa was made.  England were paired with African based Algeria, world fourteenth ranked team the USA and Slovenia who had just beaten Russia to qualification.  A tricky group in anyone's book.  The Sun therefore ran cautiously with their front page the next day;

The Sun, frontpage, 5th December 2009

Their back page, written by Nick Parker, was equally pencilled with the delicacy to rival a nuclear holocaust;

The Sun, backpage, 5th December 2009


This is my favourite quote; 

"ENGLAND looked dead certs last night to roar into the World Cup knockout stages after landing their easiest ever group."

Or maybe it's the untraceable/made up;

"Bob Gill, 63, from Essex, said: "We're definitely going to win the group." Phil Long, 32, of Leicester, added: "We couldn't have asked for a better draw."

With England's prior World Cup record, who would have predicted that would come slap back in our faces?

"USA beats England 1-1"

In a rare case of printing an un-researched, knee-jerk reaction to the England football team's latest inevitable poor 'effort', The Sun ran with the Spam baiting headline "'USA beats England 1-1'" the other day.

The article consists of a picture of the sporting cover headline which reads, "USA wins 1-1" and then lots of patronising rubbish about how the stupid Americans don't understand 'our' sport.
 Now, far be it from me to suggest there was some irony in The Sun mocking a Murdoch owned propaganda machine for making an error of judgement, but to criticise an American paper for printing"...World Cup match ends with the greatest tie with the British since Bunker Hill." whilst being responsible for running such headlines as 'Super Subs Sink the Germans' is a bit rich really.

Highlights include:

"And the US TV networks were full of praise for the US team, endlessly playing Clint Dempsey's goal after Green fumbled the ball." The Sun

Unlike over here then.

"They also continually referred to the result as a tie — and not the usual football term of a draw for the 1-1 result."

I hope this trend of foreign fuzzy-wuzzys developing their own language doesn't continue.

"American media treated the result against Fabio Capello's men as one of the best ever for their national team."

To be fair, if the editor of the paper had been reading The Sun's coverage of the World Cup, they probably think they drew with the greatest team ever, ever.

Of course this is all besides the main point which is that the headline is actually a reference to the result of a highly competitive end of season American football game between the universitys of Yale and Harvard.

In the 1968 clash Yale were the much fancied team and indeed led 29-13 going in to the final minute of the game.  However, in the last 42 seconds Harvard scored an amazing 16 points to draw tie the game. This lead to the The Harvard Crimson running the giddy headline "Harvard Beats Yale 29-29".  It was such a famous game that it een spawned a movie film years later starring Tommy Lee-Jones who actually played in said game.

The Sun missed this ironic headline ,justifiably by their own standards, probably because it would have taken a bout three minutes of research.  Or some sporting knowledge outside the English Premier Leage.

And they say that it is the Americans that don't get irony.
.