| Jun 17 |
What We Learned From Mexico vs France (2-0)Suddenly Everything Matters After the blatant tedium of the first Round, it’s clear that everyone has woken up. Hey, they say as they greet the morning, It’s the fucking World Cup and in some cases they appear actually quite interested in being there as opposed to fartarsing around on a beach (or in some alleged cases a variety of international class brothels). Not so the French. Shrugging their shoulders as only the truly French can, they take a spectacular puff on their Gitanes and mutter some gibberish about sardines and how they really need to propose to that good looking girl over there before some filthy Eenglish peeg gets to work. Given their total paucity of ambition, their spectacular lack of tactical nous and their awesome ambivalence, you kind of wonder why the French even wanted to be here and why Henry set himself up for such opprobrium by cheating his country into the World Cup. The Irish you sense would actually quite like to have been here, indeed you suspect they might actually have made an effort to, you know, attack, or score, or heaven help us actually win a match. You would have thought that the French, with the cultural memory of Japan 2002, where they played three, scored none and went home on the first available plane, might actually give a shit this time. You might have thought that on the 70th anniversary of Marshall Petan’s surrender to the Nazis, when the very existence of the French state was in doubt, Les Bleus might, you know, move themselves to play the beautiful game. But apparently not. Apologies To The Mexicans Now, previous posts like this and this might have led people to believe that I thought the Mexicans were a team of lightweight losers who pretty passed the ball around to no great effect and fell over a lot, who were led by a bunch of makeweight kids from Tottingham and Arsenal and who had no chance of ever getting out of the Group unless the French or the Uruguayans fucked the pooch. Thankfully for the Mexicans the French well and truly fucked the pooch, doing all the things I said prevented the Mexicans from beating South Africa. The French held a high line without the pace to defend it, allowing the lightweight Mexicans to skin them time and time again. Mexico, by contrast, kept a tight deep back line that prevented the French from running at them and then compounded this by dominating in midfield. Who Wants Some? Not apparently Ribery, the first of the ‘soccer stars’ to go home; not apparently Anelka, Malouda, Touloulan, or any of the other French players. And definitely not Domenech, who looks like he can’t wait to get home to the many lurid headlines that will greet him. One player who did look like he wanted some was Mexican Old Boy Cuauhtemoc Blanco, who is all of 37 million years old, came on as a sub, didn’t so much run as amble about before scoring the second goal from the penalty spot. Given his enthusiasm, as well as Mexico’s position in the ConCaf Group, which basically ensures qualification, there’s every chance that he’ll be at World Cup 2014 in Brazil. Which is more than can be said for any of this spastically useless French team. They truly lived up to the Rumsfeld description of them as Cheese-eating Surrender Monkeys. Not So Much Adios As Au Revoir A bientot Frenchies. Don’t call us, we’ll call you. 20 Down 44 To Go Leave a Reply |
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Palace Blog
Halfway between creative working and working creatively. Are you simply the things you like or are you more? Can you be more creative by changing what you do? Random acts of senseless beautality. That's what I'm interested in.
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