Football and Music

What am I going to do now…?
I used up all the footballing clichés the other day with the balls to the wall post.

I decided to bang them all in there because like many of you I was half expecting England to once again come out and shoot themselves in the foot. But a miracle ! A mira… ok not so much a miracle. More luck than anything else. The midfield was slow… Rooney was ineffective. Again. Looked like he picked up a knock. Was only because the Slovenian’s didn’t have anybody up front that could have bothered Calamity that we weren’t really troubled.

We… that’s the thing with England, it’s not just the general public back home watching the team down there, it’s us out there on the pitch too. Kicking every ball, going up for every header…flapping at a cross coming in from the right (David !) We take every elated moment – and sadly too often – every disappointing performance personally. There’s a sense of ownership with us. That’s why it’s “come on England” and not “go on England.”

So then what to do..what to do.. what other clichés could… HANG ON! We’re playing the Germans !
So let me… Ah not here matey. I’m not going to revert to that sort of lazy writing. I’ll leave that to the low market tabloids which Beat The First Man and today’s Fiver have informed me that they’ve already started with their jingoistic bullcrap. And they wonder why newspapers are dying.

Things are not helped much with some previous comments from Der Kaiser, which even Don Fabio took notice. But it seems that Franz has now backed down on his rhetoric. His previous comments were misinterpreted.   Alles Klar ?

As to the match tomorrow then. What of it ? Well as usual there’s a sense of inevitability with England every time we play Germany. We prepare ourselves for that extra time and then out on pens even before it could happen. There’s the thing, it has happened to us too often. It’s one of those hurdles that we have to jump. We’ve fallen off the horse and have never successfully go back on it ever since. Yes I know there was that 5-1 in Munich, but apart from that one match, England have never beaten Germany competitively since 1966.

Ah and there I go. Not with the 1966 reference but with the typically English thing of always putting ourselves down even before a ball is kicked. It’s keeping your expectations low I think, and then if we can break this hoodoo on ourselves we’ll look confidently at that next fence.
Which might be Argentina in the Quarters.

But we’ve beaten them before and…

» The music I’ve chosen for this occasion is a bit of a cliché also a bit ironic. You see because the tune that the England supporters band constantly play is now identified with England, but in the movie it is a Canadian, an Australian, an Hungarian an American as well as a Scotsman who are featured with their escapes. I know that the majority of escapees in the film were English, but nearly all of the lead characters were not from England.

I know though that these details don’t matter when it comes to the Elmer Bernstien (an American) composed music. It’s more of the story, the spirit of the English never-give-up attitude.

Well at least until the pens…

» Centrespot – Great Escape ’99 » England Supporters Club Band – The Great Escape 2000

Extra Time:

Here’s something that I bet… no, I’m sure that this is something that you didn’t know.
That this theme tune has lyrics – and – that John Leyton, the actor and singer (previously featured on Footie&Music), who was in The Great Escape movie sang them:

» John Leyton – The Great Escape (1963)

These songs could also be applied to England ‘scraping out of their group.

l’ll get me coat.