UP YOURS ENGLAND AND SWEET FA TO YOU TOO!

By Stanley Collymore

Sepp Blatter World United 186, England and whinging supporters 17.

The endemic, nasty, vicious, obsessively paranoid, avaricious, arrogant but wholly unwarranted sense of entitlement of England, especially in recent times, to everything it covets and wants to sanctimoniously lay its grubby paws on really pisses me off, and I’m British.

So imagine how the rest of the world put in a somewhat unpardonable position by the indisputably and highly exasperating conduct of the English FA must feel as it none the less very admirably and quite emphatically demonstrated on Wednesday 1 June 2011 when it boldly and brusquely showed two fingers and an unmistakable red card to the English FA and its bought (the identical allegation of financial corruption which the English FA is making against FIFA) sycophantic supporters like Montenegro.

Sepp Blatter is Public Enemy No.1 in countries like the UK and particularly England because from the very outset of his ascendancy to FIFA he made it unambiguously clear that he viewed football as an international sport and as such considered it as belonging to the whole world and not solely the privileged colonialist-mindset minded countries of Europe where most of FIFA’s world cups have previously been staged, and he was therefore intent on taking football and the world cup to a wider international audience while at the same time having its most prestigious competition staged more globally.

England, however, its venal cohorts and the British media don’t like this one bit as football is now a multi-billion Pound Sterling business and as with all things financial with these people they feel that they have a fundamental and exclusive entitlement to the lion’s share of this wealth with only the crumbs from this largesse being allowed to fall to the rest of the world’s football nations.

Brazil, for instance, has won more football world cups than anyone else and consistently produces some of the most exciting to watch and talented football players in the entire world, yet it is only staging the football World Cup for the first time ever in 2014, comically sidelined in the past as a worthy world venue for the football World Cup by the United States; a country where even in 2011 football, or soccer as they call it there, is still very much a minority sport. How can that actually be fair in the context of the myriad times that Europe as staged the competition, unless you apply the jaundiced logic of the English and Scottish Football Associations? And the answer quite simply is money; but you wouldn’t think so to listen to the sanctimonious crap coming out of the mouths of Dave Richards and David Bernstein of the English FA.

Bizarrely too and as these champion English Football Association twats are vocally demanding the head of FIFA’s President, Sepp Blatter on the proverbial platter and disingenuously prattling on ad nauseum about fair play they nevertheless conveniently close their eyes to the fact that while every other footballing country is legally restricted to one national association the United Kingdom – one country in law when last I checked – has precisely four distinct and separate associations: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and in actuality four votes to everyone else’s one vote each. It’s scarcely what any truly objective person, including myself, would call “legitimate” your words Mr Richards in relation to Sepp Blatter’s re-election, or fair; furthermore any major changes in the official rules governing the playing of football can’t get the go ahead without the specific say so of these four British home associations.

I wonder how many football fans or even commentators at home in the UK or around the world for that matter know this. So England’s insufferable whining has a lot to do with self-centred, financial self-interest, hurt pride at having lost its world cup bid, significantly buttressed by bunches of sour grapes; a spoilt brat’s response in other words.

And to reinforce the idiotic conduct of England’s FA and put this in its true context, on the 30 May 2011 Swansea, a decidedly Welsh football team, defeated Reading, undeniably an English one, to gain a place in next year’s line up in the highly lucrative English Premier League. Yet the English FA with sole jurisdiction over the English Premier League competition isn’t integrated with but is distinctly separate and independent from the Welsh FA, which has sole jurisdiction over as well as absolutely responsibility for all Welsh based clubs which Swansea in both respects categorically is. You just couldn’t make stuff like that up could you? Seems obvious to me of an open and shut case on the part of the British home Football Associations led by England in which they’re saying to the rest of the world: “Do as we say; not as we do!”

That’s why I’m absolutely delighted that the rest of the footballing world has firmly, categorically and overwhelming responded: “Up yours England, and sweet FA to you too!”