An Open Letter From Me (A Scotsman) To England

An Open Letter From Me (A Scotsman) To England

An Open Letter From Me (A Scotsman) To England

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Dear England,

I think it’s time we sat down and had a conversation but I’m too afraid to face you directly. The thought of millions of furious, misled eyes staring back at me while I sheepishly list all the things that I think are wrong with your national team chills me to the bone. I also know where it would end; with my limp corpse hanging from the Wembley arch.

That is why I’ve chosen to write you this letter. I want you to see what the rest of us see and until someone sits down and points it out to you, you’ll live forever in blissful ignorance. If you want that then by all means, turn away from this letter. Print it out and use its burning to ignite your wicker effigy of Roy Hodgson if you must.

I worry about you, England. 

It’s undoubtedly time to address the elephant in the room. An elephant wearing a kilt, sporran and with a massive saltire plastered across its hide like an SNP billboard. I’m Scottish. You remember us, of course.

We’re the ones who baulk with the indignation of a much better country every time a major tournament comes round and we’re not there. We’re the ones who claim to support, “whoever’s playing England” or arbitrarily pick a nation based on who has the nicest kit or where we once went on holiday. We’re the hypocrites who will happily take English players into our fold as long as their grandmother’s goldfish was bought in a pet shop in Linlithgow. The long and short is that we’re not very good.

Many English football fans believe that Scotland fans take an anti-English attitude because we hold a seven hundred year old grudge against King Edward I or because we’re jealous of the English Premier League’s quality. A sizable majority are like me; they trundle towards major tournaments wanting you to succeed. 

It’s of no real detriment to Scotland if you win the Euros. If anything, it improves the quality of the England squad and improves our squad by ensuring that we get the former U21s who languish in the international wilderness and qualify for Scotland by virtue of the “Granny Rule”.

Frankly, it’s not you; it’s your media.

Every four years, they go into an overdrive of expectation and arrogant posturing about the depth of quality available to your manager. The way some of your more renowned pundits go on, you’d assume that England could be managed by a small bowl of tiramisu and still expect to win the World Cup every four years.

You’re right to be annoyed at me, as I’m sure you are. I’m claiming that the media are ramping up your expectations and you’re all blindly and willingly complicit in it. I’m sorry you’re annoyed; I’m also sorry that I’m right.

If I was to go to any English city and ask one hundred people if they thought England had a chance of winning the European Championship this year, I confidently predict that 60% of them would say yes. Some might go on to say that injuries would probably hamper them and that this is a rebuilding period. 

Others might go on to say that the lack of pressure on the squad might mean that they could go on to win it.

Coming from a country that once sent our squad off to a World Cup to the haunting melancholy of Del Amitri’s ‘Don’t Come Home Too Soon’, I find that notion completely astonishing. The media position have altered inexorably since the injuries to Frank Lampard, Gary Cahill et al. Where there was once the bluster and bravado and constant intimations that this could be England’s year, now there is a paradox.

“There’s no pressure so we might go on and win it.”

That’s still pressure.

You know that, you’re not stupid. The media doesn’t seem to understand the notion that by suggesting you could win or even reach the final, the pressure still exists. Even Gary Neville’s noticed it. That should terrify you.

Let me reiterate my desire to see you do well now before Friday when I face the first of my battles against Adrian Chiles’ shit-eating grin and the banal observations of Alan Shearer. You should have no desire to once again hear Clive Tyldesley preemptively claim a goal-glut as he did against the USA in 2010 and have no wish to hear Harry Redknapp lament the absence of the players he would have called up.

I’m all for national pride when it comes to football. Your national team and top division is something that you should be immensely proud of. Your pervasive, deluded pundits desperately clamouring for ratings with their masquerade of confidence. This is the media that invented the ‘Golden Generation’. The generation of flops and failures, beset on all sides by scandal and flaccid, disjointed performances. 

I think you know that you’re not going to win this tournament and I think in your heart of hearts you believe that by Euro 2016, a full half century after the halcyon days of 1966, the Wembley trophy cabinet will still be nothing more than an irritation to the cleaners. 

The 1966 generation were the Golden ones and your next generation have all the potential to be the next if they’re given the opportunity to grow, join together and form a cohesive unit. The media will never allow you, the English people, that new golden generation. Flops and failures make better headlines.

Take a stand. Don’t let the media overstate the case. Get behind your team but don’t expect great things. The simple fact of the matter is that this is football. If you fail to win another tournament, the players will not be voted out of the team or marched into The Tower Of London and summarily executed. The media want you to believe that every year is your year so that their vicious, heartless dissections of where it all went wrong will sell more papers.

It all went wrong when the media started speculating on who you’d be playing in the final before the first group game had even kicked off.

Yours sincerely,

A Concerned Scotsman (Michael Park)