Neighbours become strangers to us overnight
The photo album in ourheads. Iconic images from the business end. Kempes dancing in litter, Tardelli’s catharsis, Brehme’s bad foot, Baggio melting, zombified Ronaldo, reanimated Ronaldo, Zizou’s lid popping, Iniesta’s lasting memorial to a friend.
An album the whole world can flick through.
In these parts, we are exposed to a soundtrack too, at least to the beginning and middle of World Cups. An exuberant, optimistic overture segueing into a lament and eventually the raging metal of recrimination.
We can hum it. Rule Britannia, Exit Music from OK Computer, then anything you want off Judas Priest’s Screaming For Vengeance.
England expecting. England going out. England demanding answers.
Before they turn on themselves, we get to know what else denied them. God dealt Kev and Trev a bum hand before Spain and showed them all the back of his hand in Mexico. In Italy, the great debilitating illness was contracted; 12-yard fever. Onto Beckham’s persecution, Ronaldinho’s fluke, the lingering illness, Lampard’s rage against the lack of machines.
We tend to add our own lyrics. Two words, mainly. Shambles, Bill.
This one, though, is different. New chords out of bum notes.
Just before kick-off in Sao Paulo on Thursday, ITV rolled a set-piece where the camera got right up in the grill of various England players, pierced deep into their eyes and their souls and invited them to tell us what it meant.
We heard about grannies and granddads and mams and dads and dreams and sacrifices and Rickie Lambert provided what Rickie Lambert could only have been brought to Brazil to provide; a tear or two.
It was quite touching, in an ITV kind of way. As Lee Dixon put it, we got to know them as people. It would have been a vaguely familiar spectacle too, to devotees of X Factor or other such codology.
On X Factor, we are always hearing about their grannies and granddads and they are always helping us to get to know them as people. That is all you can do when nobody is quite sure what they are or what they will become.
And that is, more or less, where England found themselves, in the middle of a World Cup. Nobody quite sure if they had picked a squad to contest it or to experience it. Wide-eyed hopefuls on the big stage, eager to jack in the office and at least knock a summer on the Canaries cabaret scene out of it.
Just wanting to make their granny proud.
A deflated England with a fresh tune. Easier on the ear. Roy Hodgson, who could deflate a pancake, must take some credit for its composition but it has taken more than Roy. A whole nation put aside its celebrated hurt and its entitlement and went along for the ride. Little wonder the other Roy knew it was no place for him.
The new mood music almost allowed them enjoy the defeat by Italy, as they sung along in “the spirit of adventure”.
Possibly sensing a dangerous resurfacing of optimism, we learned that Roy moved quickly in the aftermath, summoning Lamps and Stevie to address the players. They spoke, Clive Tyldesley told us, “of the sinking feeling that follows a World Cup exit and how long it stays with you”.
Sure enough, that spirit of adventure had been deflated a little by Thursday.
With none of their old certainty to fall back on, they now began to ask all manner of new questions of themselves. At half-time, Adrian Chiles wondered if they were dirty enough. Glenn Hoddle concluded that cheating just wasn’t in their DNA.
Maybe they were right. The innocents abroad spent much of the second half diving for penalties, but, like a lot of their work, in a way that lacked any real conviction.
Since they were left in limbo, at the finish, the guitars never started to squeal on the post-mortem, at least until some of the press lads began to enquire about resignations, just for old times’ sake.
Over here, the usual wake kicked off, same as it has done for so long, with a slight Billo smirk. But there was a verse we hadn’t heard much at times like this.
We have often questioned their know-how, their technique, their culture. But we have rarely wondered how much they wanted it. It might be the one thing we have never questioned.
We should probably have detected something through the tears beforehand. Anyone familiar with X Factor will know there was something missing in those eyes; a desperation perhaps, that terrible, suffocating fear that this is the one chance, the only glimpse.
Gilesy, without looking into their eyes, maybe without ever sitting through X Factor, knew something was wrong. “Would they be prepared to kill their granny to win a game?”
The answer, everyone suspected, was probably not. Even if they were, you couldn’t help feel Roy would advise against it.
It was a little sad, as we realised we don’t really know them any more. England no longer expects. The three lions on their chests tamed.
A different tune. But the hurt goes on.
Xabi Alonso wasn’t drawn on grandparental murder, but he did tell us he felt the Spanish hadn’t wanted it enough either.
But it was hard to get a sense, looking at them, that they had much left to give.
Perhaps, in that split-second before David Silva fluffed his big chance against the Dutch, he had an inkling that plenty more opportunities would come along, even if this one was spooned wastefully. But then Silva, even on his best days, has never given the impression his granny is in grave danger. In any case, that would only have applied a plaster, you feel. It was quickly evident that something beautiful had withered slightly, had curled at the edges.
Andres Iniesta disagreed with Alonso, finding his answer too obvious and preferring to look for a more systematic failure. If there was any loss of conviction, of belief, perhaps it was in the means rather than the end. When the consensus grew that they were boring; the clamour rose to graft on a ‘plan B’, as though it was a simple transplant to perform. They tried it and the Costa coup soured a lot of people towards them. Maybe it also soured their delicate blend.
RoryMcIlroy: Holding a hurley, timing his announce-ment to give the IrishOpen a nice publicity boost; anyone would think he was trying to work his way back into our good books.
Giannis Maniatis: The Greek midfielder booked a flight home from the World Cup because he was upset at the standard of crossing in training. At least the spirit of Keano travelled to Brazil.
