General Football Nonsense

[Shaqiri Is Boss]

That’s quite a recent thing (not the white men, but white men from the north west)

20 or so years ago, you had the likes of Poll, Bennett, Barber, Dirkin, Elleray who were all southerners so it felt like there wasn’t an over representation of one particular geographic area

Not quite sure why there is this surfeit of people from the north west now.

From what I've heard, refereeing now at the lower leagues (as in the summit of Sunday League to Non-League) is that much easier in the North West (read: Greater Manchester) due to travel and the number of games, referees have had something of an advantage there compared to London and the South East where one may need to travel 2 hours to get to a game. Some to make that jump from amateur to professional is that bit easier.

Equally, I guess, is it's different being a new referee and abused for £50 a Sunday in Oldham as it is in... Battersea. (Btw what a bloody lovely place that is now.) Plus is being a "top ref" is just more of a thing now, compared to back in the day you had Clive Thomas and then Geoff from his farm in East Anglia...

[Letters]

And as an ethnic minority myself

You’re white in Tower Hamlets?
#wengerbabies

[Mac76]

I trust this will be applied to everyone for the remainder?

You're new to how the FA 'works' aren't you?

[Mac76]

I don’t think everyone is a cipher. But you are. Your anti-English screed on here is a constant.

Give me some examples - if it's 'constant' presumably you can find lots of examples from yesterday (leaving aside the football managers discussion ofc which isn't anti-English anyway)

or the day before

or the day before that...

The argument started because the point was being made about lack of English coaches at the top level. The reason is negate there aren’t that many English coaches full stop. So when you have plodding dullards like Lampard and Gerrard getting fast tacked it’s because people are desperate to see an English coach succeed

OK I'm going to try really hard here to get down to your level and communicate in nice easy steps for you:

Q: so WHY are they desperate to see an English coach succeed?

A: because there aren't any succeeding at the top level

Q: so why aren't there any?

A: because they're not good enough

Q: so why aren't they good enough?

A: because they lack the modern way of thinking or the depth of understanding, sophisticated tactical thinking or man-management skills to do so - that's my theroy

Q: so why English people in particular?

A: well maybe that's the point where you have to concede - as you actually do in your post where you talk about English players not going abroad - that there is perhaps something insular and unwilling to take on new cultures or ideas prevalent among English football people - whether you think that speaks to the wider English people is up to you, I made no indication that it was my view

Ofc I was being mildly flippant by saying there were all thick dinosaurs and it was your choice to suddenly get all serious and po-faced about it and scientifically examine what was clealry an off-the-cuff jokey post (to anyone with any kind of sense of humour that is) - no doubt you thought you could get a cheap win

My point still stands - if there isn't an inherent failure in the English football system and culture to produce people of the calibre we need, what is it if it isn't what i've described above?

I've given my theory - now give us yours

[HCZ_Reborn]

I mean you need only go to any part of your previous posts where Brexit or even the England national football team is being discussed when you constantly go on about this belief in this mythical English exceptionalism, that only exists in the minds of people who live in the kind of bubble that you do.

And really, all these attempts to traduce my intelligence would be far more scathing if they weren’t so clearly a projection of your resentment that I constantly berate your lack of intelligence. It’s not an insult, I just don’t think you’re very smart or indeed anywhere near as smart as you believe yourself to be. Certainly when discussing anything political what comes across time and time again is the superficiality of your beliefs.


However it’s very kind of you to lay out your thought process here, and prove to me that again I’m right and that you are instinctively anti English because your conclusion is that there is something in the culture that makes us less sophisticated than our European counterparts. And again I have to keep informing you that this is only a belief you might hold if you understood nothing about the culture outside of Britain so ironically your snobbishness actually is also quite parochial

Maybe suppose we abandon that and actually focus on where we agree that we don’t have systems that encourage coaching. Plus even IBK spoke about how when we are talking about ethnic minorities that impression may be given that “coaching is not for the likes of me”. Maybe similarly white English players feel that when the cultural hegemony is of people like you who instinctively sneer at English people for being dullards and that people on the continent are far more sophisticated that they won’t bother in the first place.

And I think that kind of inverted snobbery towards home grown coaches probably does exist to a degree at board level, as well as being risk adverse and preferring to give the job to someone who has already managed abroad.

Where as your theory falls down where it hinges somehow on the belief that England has regressed culturally in the past thirty years (you might find however that if you did believe that you’d find some unlikely allies on here ), where not only were there more coaches at the top level of English football there were more English coaches full stop.

[HCZ_Reborn]

And the TLDR version of the above post

You: I’m sick of you making assumptions about me and inferring I’m stupid

Me: They aren’t assumptions, they are observations based on things you say and you’re even kind enough to prove my point for me. And I will stop thinking you are stupid when you stop saying stupid things.

[Mac76]

However it’s very kind of you to lay out your thought process here, and prove to me that again I’m right and that you are instinctively anti English because your conclusion is that there is something in the culture that makes us less sophisticated than our European counterparts.

you said 'constantly' - where are the 'constant' examples - you know what 'constant' means right?

More importantly, I guess I need to point out that highlighting something's faults isn't to be 'anti' it

I might point out faults with an Arsenal performance but that doesn't mean I'm anti-Arsenal - in fact it's the opposite, I'm pro-Arsenal so I'm concerned if the team/club lets itself down in some way

As it happens I do think there are sections of the English population (not based on class mind you but all kinds of factors), egged on by right-wing populist media and politicians, who take an insular and narrow-minded approach, hence the 'Leave' vote. But that doesn't make me anti-English

On the football thing I'd again point out your previous post where it was you yourself that acknowledged that English footballers and managers are less likely to go abroad - apart from the fact that even that very statement could be portrayed as 'anti-English', you've so far failed to explain why that is but I'm keen to know - what's your theory? Do tell

As for snobbery there's something called 'inverted snobbery' which takes against any intellectual or sophisticated argument simply because it can't be said in a few words of less than three syllables - again the anti-experts in the right-wing media and Reform etc love it because they can use it to trash anything which proves they're talking bullshit

[HCZ_Reborn]

But it’s a critique based on perception and I constantly and patiently explain to you why you might have that perception. And you get all resentful when I do

The left and right are two sides of the same coin in my view. They seem to hate England as much as the “Liberals” do and I put that term in inverted commas as there’s often very little liberal about them.


The right hates England because it’s been taken over by Islamists and or DEI LBTQ+ as if the two things share a common frontier


The liberal/left/progressives hate England because it’s rainy fascist island full of little englander gammons


Brexit is also nothing to do with English exceptionalism (or Welsh exceptionalism as the majority of the Welsh voted to leave as well). It’s our version of a trend that’s happening all across the occident where people see the economic gap grow bigger and bigger. To a degree whilst supranational institutions like the EU aren’t the cause, they are representative of the expansion of global capitalism where old areas of industry have been hollowed out. This is why ostensibly working class areas that were heavily industrial at one point tend to be your epicentre for voting for the populist right.


Are the right their saviours? No these are the people who spent the most time completely gutting these areas and de-regulating the economy and watering down collective bargaining power

But the centre left parties have not really done enough to address this either, and along with it embraced the rather obnoxious and patronising social justice activism that got everyone’s backs up (the type of thinking that invariably leads to things like quotas).

And people like yourself in your snobbish disdain allowed the right to play divide and rule. Because why would you vote for someone who openly looks down on you, better in some way to vote for someone who at least pretends not to (even if it is superficial and Machiavellian)

[Mac76]

The fact that you say 'people like you' just sums you up, you just can't break out of your stereotype-entrenched way of seeing the world, it's sad really but why don't we get back to the point (nice attempt once again at a diversion btw)

What's your theory for there not being more Enflish top-level managers?

We're still waiting

[HCZ_Reborn]

The fact that you say 'people like you' just sums you up, you just can't break out of your stereotype-entrenched way of seeing the world, it's sad really but why don't we get back to the point (nice attempt once again at a diversion btw)

What's your theory for there not being more Enflish top-level managers?

We're still waiting

No I say people like you because you fit the criteria. As I said before not everyone fits a stereotype but you do. Even yesterday when trying to prove you didn’t by coming out against quotas you couldn’t help yourself making an anti English dig. We agree that many of the current crop of English coaches are poor, the difference is you think it’s because they are English that they are poor.

Because you think displays of patriotism are right wing. When actually what happens is the right wing opportunistically jump on the patriot bandwagon because too many on the cultural liberal/left find stating love of country to be cringe. This essentially boils down to why the same type of people were pro EU, not any real understanding of the organisation but a way of displaying their sophisticated cosmopolitan credentials.
I don’t especially do patriotism because it’s arbitrary (England’s achievements are not mine) but I’m certainly not ashamed of the country either, I don’t call people flag shaggers because they are fine with displaying the cross of St George or the Union Jack or feel this condescending resentment towards people because of how they vote.

So with the greatest of respect, chiding me for saying I stereotype people (mainly just you) is largely you don’t like the fact that I can see your supposed worldliness for how vapid it is. And that your smug superiority is a house made of sand.

“We’re waiting”?

Who’s we in this context? The Royal we?. At least I don’t pretend to speak for anyone but myself. Even Letters told you I’d already explained what the Theory is.

I’ve explained to you countless times what my theory is. I’ve said there are far fewer English players going into coaching full stop…therefore there’s less of a deeper well to draw from for the top clubs. I also think that to a degree, at an implicit level the same snobbery you show towards Englishness (unsophisticated) is embodied by the boards of a lot of clubs or probably more realistically I admit they want the finished article (which means someone who has already coached in the top flight, and thus they will shop abroad).

Now you’ve noted that I said more English players should be prepared to play abroad and I still say this, and I say the same about English coaches…in order to get the experience they are not getting here. But I think also more needs to be done to encourage them from a young age. For a lot of working class kids in this country to become a footballer is an aspiration, why not becoming a coach as well?.