The English meat sweat blues

Words: Tom Reed

Images: Nico Walter

“We’re the favourites, we should be doing better” - Er not really mate.

“If we can’t beat Denmark we may as well go home now” - Er not really mate.

“Can you sack a manager after two games of the Euros?” - Er not really mate.

You could power Britain’s green energy commitments from the parped punditry of our skulking observations while sinking into pub seats. Wind farms for waved arms and the waft of palms on foreheads.

That familiar feeling of being let down by a loved one in public, The England superfan who looks like the lovechild of Michael Crawford and your best mate from the 80’s with the calculator watch, growing a whole new craggy crow’s foot in the space of 90 minutes.

They couldn’t put in a performance of an alleycat in the sun that’s eaten the whole contents of the Gourmet Burger Kitchen bins could they?

And in front of the superfan?- Er yes they could mate, this England side could let down anyone. They’ll let down themselves, their school and their mothers at a moment’s notice.

Make the copyright lawyers of the Boss put in a claim for the use of the Dancing In the Dark lyrics.

“You can’t copyright a soccer fans’ chant Bruce”.

“I don’t care get it done”.

It’s not as if this hasn’t been signposted by Gareth Southgate for months, if not years very publicly. He’s ditched the waistcoat in a football sideline semaphore and stuck on the kind of blouson that you can imagine Angela Lansbury would wear in her downtime on the set of Murder She Wrote, while chain smoking and demanding to see Kenneth from accounts.

In 2023, with the Human Centipede queues for trains in Germany, a mere year or so away, Southgate literally said “We'll have to start looking in the Championship (for England players) or elsewhere, because we also don't export many players.”

The picking players from the Championship line, the equivalent of the Blockbuster Video bargain bin wasn’t new, and was originally suggested by Yellow Pages Sales Director turned Premier League CEO Richard Scudamore in 2015, perhaps suggesting it might be the Lidl leagues rather than big time Euro glory going forwards.

Now, despite Southgate being to attacking football what Halloumi is to gaps between BBQ grills, he is a man who chooses his words carefully.

“I think we've got four left-footed left backs in the league at the moment”

The same year, Sky Sports very succinctly summed up Southgate’s words on his diminishing skills puddle akin to those lakes that appeared on farms in February and had ducks swimming next to oil seed rape before disappearing with the first licks of May sun.

“Gareth Southgate admits concern over England's shrinking talent pool with only 32 per cent of Premier League starters eligible for selection.”

And yet we ignore the normcore Nostradamus Southgate’s prophecies of perhaps England’s squad being a tad thin and a subsequently a smidgen overrated and instead fixate on the positioning of the mercurial but slight Phil Foden, floating like a mint Aero where Gazza’s strength was Mars bar fat.

Foden had the infuriated air of a school-kid that knows he’s better than a few of his team-mates and is going to show the teacher what’s what but the nonchalant Danes from the football backwater of that cold place up in Europe just shrugged the shoulders and played their Wes Anderson football.

After the match, attention turned to sacking Southgate as expected, which could have as much effect as subbing in a new sword introducer from the kid’s game Pop Up Pirate.

It’s not so much a collective amnesia but we’ve all gone into a coma after eating that third Posh Dog from Marks and Spencer. The meat sweats are kicking in, we don’t want to think about the Premier League being the be all and end all for English football, an international product that gives all too little chances for young English players.

Forget the B-Teams being put in the Checkatrade Trophy to help the England side, have a fourth Peroni,

Why are they putting Premier League kids into a Football League Trophy if the England Team are favourites for the Euros?

Fuck it. I’ll have a slice of cheesecake, where’s that Police Academy 6 DVD?

Tom is Terrace Edition Editor and can be found on Twitter: @tomreedwriting

You can find Nico on X: @nico5381