Eamonn Sweeney: No shame not to encourage England

Everything makes fun of England, laugh all in England, ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha. Yes, I know it's terribly immature to me. I should be ashamed of myself. But everyone has its breaking point and I reached mine last week. Sometimes you just have enough.

Enough returns home, he returns home, enough articles on how Gareth Southgate solved alone the problems of the Brexit Britain case, guys who make fun of triumph of diversity as England were the only team in the World Cup with black players while in fact, as pointed out the great music journalist Neil Kulkarni during the week, "Where the fans of England come together is not a place for people with brown skin. "

Enough of the arrogance that saw Croatia sacked and the final against France discussed before the semi-finals were played, enough of the absurd distress of the country. ambulance that was destroying IKEA, enough whining about the ingratitude of their Celtic neighbors.

Enough, enough, a hundred times enough made yacht Simon Coveney crawling on the foundation of Prince Harry to mislead him that most of the Irish were hoping that England would win the World Cup. And the most boring men in Ireland who write rumors about why they would support the Union Jack of Southgate and would reprimand those who did not, apparently under the impression that They said something extremely courageous and iconoclastic. In reality, this article was written during all the finals in living memory and its self-congratulatory amazement at its own daring makes its writers sound like middle-aged boys trying to impress a barmaid by going, "I know, I think everyone's baduality"

Why should we support England? We are not Englishman Your average Englishman does not think he should "advance" and "show maturity" admiring Germany and doing common cause They salute a German defeat with a sneer and make fun of of Scottish failure and see no reason for that not to be the case, because all this is only gossip, I have never met an Englishman who spends his time at s & # 's I would like to be able to say that the opposite is true, but it is the legacy of colonialism, I suppose.

Gareth Southgate, in his boy crossover page with a snooker player outfit, seems to be pretty decent skin. But that does not mean that there is truth in the claims that they represent a sweeter and gentler England. It seems to me the same place. When Roy Keane had the temerity to explain where they had been cheated in the semifinals, the reaction was familiar. "I'm sorry, but Roy Keane is awful," tweeted the worst leader of the British Labor Party, Ed Miliband. The intellectual power Ian Wright could only fall back on the imitation of Keane's accent. Because they are foreigners yeah, they talk funny not like us.

When someone points out the tendency of English partisans to fall into this kind of ignorant chauvinism, our native apologists tend to mumble: "We are also bad in our own country. way. "But we are not, are we? The two ambulances and pizzerias have survived our victory over Italy in the Championship of Europe unscathed.Didi Hamann is allowed to comment on the weaknesses of the 39 Irish team without anyone intervene: "Do you vote? Zis is not right. "

The most irritating of all was the constant chorus that the Irish should be throwing their hearts out with the English, because," They were very good at giving jobs to the Irish "Most of the people who come out have never actually worked in England, which may explain their lack of knowledge of the functioning of the labor market." These jobs were not provided by charity, the English employers needed people and the Irish were the best candidates for the jobs they had.

This concept of national gratitude strangely illuminates the way our Anglophiles of the World Cup must consider our own hands. When I see a stranger working here, I do not say, "I hope you are grateful for what we have done for you Andris / Ahmed / Magda." I do not think that They need to to support our national teams and I certainly do not think that their relations in the interior of the country have the duty to do so. Maybe it's immature of me.

One of the quirks of the England campaign was that they had a premature credit for things that they had not actually done. Evidenced by the amount of articles that contrast with the performance of the Southgate team with that of previous teams who had participated in major semifinals, but who have returned to normal. This team was different because they. . . I entered a major semifinal and (let me check my notes) came short. Instead of a new 1966, it was still 1990 and 1996.