Tommy Martin: Was our passion for the Nations League just a summer fling?
UEFA Nations League Group B1, LKS Stadium, Lodz, Poland 14/6/2022
Your correspondent got a good sense of where the UEFA Nations League stands in the greater scheme of things when the bosses at the TV day job told us that we were being bumped off Virgin Media Two in favour of Love Island.
Our regular live football slot, we were informed, would be taken over by shirtless hunks and pouting jezebels, an invasive species against which the fag end of football season stood no chance. Other than asking Brian Kerr to don speedos and douse himself in fake tan, we had to accept that UEFA’s much-maligned summer jamboree would be shown in the perfectly acceptable but slightly humbler surroundings of Virgin Media Three. With the pursuit of romance a bigger ratings-winner, the Nations League was the love that dare not speak its name.
To be fair to the schedulers, many players involved in the Nations League, knackered after the ravages of the club season, failed to match the lusty enthusiasm of the horny himbos entering Love Island. In tactical terms, the endeavours of the randy clientele at Casa Amor resemble the energetic, Jurgen Klopp-inspired vigour of gegenpressing, more than the slow-paced fare on show in a lot of Nations League matches. In Love Island parlance, the act of wooing a potential mate is even dubbed ‘grafting’, a term which suggests James Milner closing down a dawdling opposition midfielder rather than any smooth act of romantic seduction.
While Love Island acts as an Attenborough-style study of the mating rituals of our peculiar species of shaven primate, its success is also explained by the way it simulates the breathless swirl of holiday romance. This means that heartfelt declarations made in the heady, hormonal heat rarely survive exposure to drab reality. Romantic bonds forged under the Spanish sun soon dissolve when the smitten heroine realises her bronzed Adonis is merely a gym instructor from Bolton whose mother still does his washing.
While passions rarely flared so intensely on Virgin Media Three – and, at least in studio, six-packs were fewer to be seen – the thought did occur as to how much of the Nations League fare we were watching was the football equivalent of a summer fling. Would we remember any of this when the nights began to draw in? Had we made fools of ourselves over the League A relegation battle? Did we make a connection with that nice Hansi Flick or have we been totally mugged off?
For Gareth Southgate, the last two weeks can certainly be filed under Holidays From Hell. The England manager doesn’t strike you as the type to seek out the lurid fleshpots of Ibiza at the best of times; something gentle involving caravans would have sufficed for his team as they built up for a World Cup for which they fancied themselves as being among the favourites.
Instead, poor old Gareth lost his luggage, arrived to find his hotel was a building site and got third degree sunburn on the first day. Throw in two unpleasant encounters with a rowdy bunch of Hungarians and the England boss will be sticking to hiking in the Lake District in future. Despite being the most successful England manager of the last 50 years, suddenly Southgate and his team’s supporters are suffering that hallmark of any unhappy holidaymakers: familiarity breeding contempt.
While Southgate may wish to remind the fans of the domestic bliss they have hitherto enjoyed, many are beginning to feel like Shirley Valentine. Desperate to escape the drudgery of Gareth’s egg and chips on a Tuesday, they pine for steamy encounters with a moustachioed man called Costas.
While some of the Nations League combatants sought rest and relaxation (often in the middle of matches) others yearned for fresh excitement with a handsome stranger. On the rebound after recent World Cup heartbreak, Italy manager Roberto Mancini threw himself into a promiscuous spree. Bidding tearful farewell to an old flame in Giorgio Chiellini, Mancini proceeded to use 35 players in his team’s five matches including 12 debutants. You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince, but that’s a lot of frogs. You’d hope he will keep in touch.
And what of the great romantic himself, Stephen Kenny? His long courtship of the Irish public is a classic case of beauty being in the eye of the beholder. While Kenny has swept many off their feet with his sweet nothings, he gives plenty others the ick.
Nothing much changed in that regard over the past two weeks of summer frolics. Kenny’s attempts to crack on with the remaining sceptics got off to a rocky start. If the opening games against Armenia and Ukraine were a chance to test out his best lines, his team’s performances amounted to little more than a mumbled ‘do you come here often?’
Kenny’s admirers preferred to focus on the sun-scorched days against Scotland and Ukraine away rather than the first week’s drab washout. For them, love is blind, and the passionate ardour with which Ireland’s youngsters threw themselves into the latter fixtures will be the lasting snapshot of this getaway, rather than its flaccid opening encounters.
Ultimately the best evidence for the fleeting value of this Nations League sojourn comes from Wales, who found something true and lasting elsewhere. In qualifying for the World Cup for the first in 64 years, Gareth Bale and his teammates have truly found ‘the one’, and unlike the residents of Love Island, the Welsh will be snuggling up with their summer catch when the winter months draw in.
