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In PG Wodehouse's day they knew how to react when someone played a hackneyed, over-sentimental dirge – they hurled rotten fruit

I wonder if we are the new Greece. Not economically, obviously – that's possibly for later – but in a football sense. You may remember the 100-1 outsiders winning the European Championship in 2004, without conceding a single goal in the knock-out stages, and being accused of anti-football in the process. The coach, the arch-pragmatist Otto Rehagel, said he played what football he could with the players available, which seemed to be the line Roy Hodgson was taking in his interview with Gary Lineker on the BBC's Football Focus on Saturday.

I am not the greatest at following tactics-talk – we have moderately paid experts here in charge of that stuff – but Gary seemed to be suggesting a lack of fluidity in the way Hodgson has set up his team. "Do we need more lines?" he asked him, by which I suspect he meant lines of attack, at which the Rehagel de nos jours shrugged and smiled enigmatically, as if to say: "Yeah right, Gary. I've only been in charge of this bunch of losers for a couple of weeks, what do you want?

"Total football? That tippy-tappy Arsenal stuff? Be serious. If I can get them to keep their shape, pass to someone in the same colour shirt occasionally, and stay in the hotel at night playing dominoes, I deserve a knighthood."

Or maybe I am reading too much into the encounter. As previously advertised, I am on more familiar ground critiquing Gary's stupid puns than getting involved in such red‑hot football chat, but the presenter, possibly stung by being branded alongside his Match of the Day colleagues as a lightweight, pressed the new manager quite strongly on the rigidity of his tactics. You could tell it was a serious interview, as it's a two‑parter, the second segment to be broadcast on Wednesday.

The ITV team covering the Belgium match favoured references to George Graham's parsimonious 1990s Arsenal over the Greek comparison. "One-nil to the Engerland," was commentator Clive Tyldesley's sign-off after England's second successive victory by that score, a joke enjoyed so much by presenter Adrian Chiles that he immediately repeated it. In fairness, it was still being used in the sports news on BBC Breakfast on Sunday morning.

With the Euros less than a week away, one assumes that both ITV and BBC have as little room for manoeuvre as Roy Hodgson, and will be sticking more or less with the current squads and tactics, although surely it is time for those few bars of the Verve's Bitter Sweet Symphony ITV uses throughout its England coverage to be retired from international football.

There is a scene in a PG Wodehouse novel when the song Sonny Boy is sung repeatedly at some sort of public recital, for reasons I have forgotten, and the crowd, eventually losing its taste for the once popular song, begins to pelt the performers with rotten fruit. That is how I feel about the Verve. I throw metaphorical fruit every time the tune is trotted out, saving just a little for the incessant joyless oom-pah of the England band.

As for the punditry, ITV's panel has a certain balance, I suppose, with Gareth Southgate in a holding role as the voice of reason, Roy Keane wide left, the sceptic not afraid to point out that Belgium and Norway were more moderate opposition than advance publicity suggested, and Peter Reid, who one suspects will assume the Ian Wright role of cheerleader when the tournament starts, at the moment there primarily for colour.

It was probably a mistake, by the way, for ITV to use quite so many shots of Gary Neville, the Sky pundit now on the England coaching staff, as it acted as a subconscious reminder that analysis can be slightly better done. Still, with two ad-breaks bookending ITV's punditry, it leaves plenty of time to brew tea, toast crumpets, and make snack selections for the second half, secure in the knowledge you will not be missing much.

Regular readers, however, will know I rely on the commercial breaks in football to keep abreast of latest developments in shaving technology. There was a time when the shaver companies were involved in a kind of mad arms race, each constantly trumping the other's number of blades. "I'll see your four, and raise you one," was the rule, as they raced towards blade-centred Mutually Assured Destruction.

Now they have switched their pitch to the soothing unctions coating their many blades. The latest, the Wilkinson Hydro 5, appearing at half‑time in the England match, boasted "hydration where you least expect it", presumably meaning when you shave. Well, call me old‑fashioned, but for some years now I have managed to achieve hydration during shaving through the simple device of using water, available from any household tap.

Admittedly, it's not the "water activated gel" Wilkinson's promises, but like Roy I work with what I've got. Read More

هل تريد وضع المحتوى السابق فى موقعك او مدونتك مجانا؟؟
انسخ الكود التالى و ضعه فى موقعك او مدونتك.

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