James Hamilton on Sport History and Psychology
Looking up and down the list of Premiership clubs for the forthcoming season, it’s hard not to feel lowered by a sense of pre-emptory anti-climax. Between the twenty of them, there are perhaps three or four interesting narratives. Of course, looking for narrative structure in a list of names isn’t just other-worldly in its own…
In Part One of this article, I looked back at Sven Goran Ericksson’s time in charge of England. I reflected that he’d been a man with a plan, specific ideas of how to build a winning team – I reflected on the immediate impact of these ideas, and how the ultimate aim, winning the World…
What now, for England? After yet another quarter-final defeat, after yet another defeat on penalties, there’s a feeling abroad that all the progress we thought we’d made was just a lovely illusion. We’re no nearer winning the big titles than we were six years ago. To some people, this is an outrage, because it’s so…
I heard both semi-finals on medium wave radio. I was in Herefordshire, driving, and the combination of constantly-changing speed limits and nests of safety cameras kept my concentration well away from the games. In these circumstances it’s often the case that part of my mind will still be listening, unbeknownst to me consciously, and that…
Before I start my post-mortem, spare a moment for the British press. They didn’t want Owen Hargreaves. Will any of them now admit their error, or will they fall back on saying that he’s “won over the fans”? They didn’t want Crouch. And no other manager besides Sven would ever have picked him. Or stuck…
Impossible not to feel a lot of sympathy for Spain. Like England in 1998, they came to the tournament with a determination that this time, their talent would find its reward – and, like England, after playing impressively, they’ve gone out in the Second Round. You can’t force football history – football’s magical coincidences, mawkish…
You’d have asked for anyone save Portugal. It’s one for the remaining band who believe that the lesser the opposition, the better our chances. For the rest of us, we can only hope that England stir themselves, and trust in something more interesting for the semi-final. Brace yourselves for a week of the following stories…
I’m not going to enter into any detailed analysis here, but these are some pointers as to why I think England have only one World Cup star on their shirts: England’s best teams have almost always peaked outside World Cup years – the 46-48 side, the 60-61 team, and the 75-78 side that Revie never…
A little late, perhaps, as I’ve already seen German gamesmanship sneak them past Sweden in their second-round tie, and I’ve already watched (yet another) epic Argentine victory, this time over an excellent Mexico. That match, at any rate, lived up to the extraordinary standards that the tournament’s set so far, and my worries that things…
Reading the almost universally stupid write-ups of England v Paraguay on Sunday morning, I wondered whether I’d been at the same game as these journalists. Most depressing was the sheer determination on the part of these men that every single prejudice they’d been peddling about England in the run-up to the tournament would be illustrated…