Newspaper, 26 June 2014

Newspaper, 26 June 2014

At this point, nobody cared what the score was. We didn’t expect anything. The betting market illustrates this. Perhaps, as much due to Costa Rica’s excellent performances as well as England’s exit, England opened the betting at 2/5, finishing as long as 3/4. Cost Rica were as long as 7/1, going in as short as 15/4.

Don’t let anybody tell you England fans weren’t expecting anything from this World Cup.

Newspaper, 21-22 June 2014

A weekend of hindsight. In fact, it goes on well into the week.Whether we agree with them or not, opinions and emotive responses are why we become so absorbed in the game; but it’s much easier sat at your desk, or in the boozer. Having said that, they couldn’t have had anyone more informed or renowned to lead the charge as Brian Glanville.

“Hindsight is always 20/20” Billy Wilder

@1jacobwalker

Newspaper, 20 June 2014

F***. And there we have it, despair. Typical bloody England. We’re all but out.

Gary Lineker @garylineker 20 June

“The whole low expectation thing didn’t help then. Getting knocked out still feels shit!”

An early England exit from a major tournament is a newspaper’s field day. All that time they’ve spent scraping around for stories has now been rewarded. It’s time to write with purpose. In enters our good friend hindsight.

 England should’ve done this, Gerrard’s not good enough, neither is Sterling, neither is Henderson, and especially Hodgson, he’s the worst of them all, he got the formation totally wrong, bloody foreigners know how to do it better than us, we should’ve got Redknapp, Mourinho, anyone.

 They wrote this with a more pressing deadline, just wait until the next edition where they can finger point more thoroughly.

This is probably the pinnacle of individual obsession. Wayne Rooney, portrayed as the squad’s pantomime villain and having scored the goal that the media craved, is no longer the focal point. Of course though, it’s Rooney related.

Imagine taking a picture of your mate’s kid crying and then putting it on Facebook. That is what this is like. Arguably encroaching morality, I’d expect much better from one of the more respectable broadsheet newspapers.

The Sun went with a similar picture. But with this headline:

“Don’t cry, Kai. If Italy beat Costa Rica today… then Suarez and co lose to Italy.. and Daddy scores a couple (or maybe more) against Costa Rica… WE’RE THROUGH!”

Despite the omission of a crass headline, the picture speaks for itself (res ipsa loquitur).

@1jacobwalker

Newspaper, 19 June 2014

Being expectant is a horrible state of mind in the context of football. There is no added bonus to it. Either you get what you believe you are owed, or you are left bitterly disappointed when the England team fails to fulfill their potential. Objectively, expecting an England win against Uruguay is expecting the best possible outcome. Anything less and the expectation has created disappointment.

I think it’s near impossible to pinpoint an authority for the idea that this was a World Cup without expectation, but it was generally accepted as a notion. I suppose it has come from oscillating between hope and despair at the numerous tournaments which have preceded. We England fans are so accustomed to these intense shifts of feelings, there is never usually an in between. We wanted to avoid that this time.

Perhaps, social media played a role – this was after all the first “social media World Cup” – whereby enough users had been tweeting about how little expectation there was, or at least acknowledging its non-existence. However, enough people were using it as a reason to justify why England would do well at this World Cup. The newspapers and media in general, inadvertently, give enough reasons in their reporting for people to slowly accumulate an expectation; whether those people realise it or not.

Examples and acknowledgments of this paradoxical notion of little or no expectation

BBC Sport, Guide to England’s Group D

For once England arrive at a major tournament not weighed down by too much expectation, as the home of football takes the beautiful game to its modern day mecca.

Twitter

Nick Webster @dcfc_flagman Jun 9

“No expectation. No pressure. Just like Derby last season. Got a feeling we will beat Italy and this will be a good World Cup for England”.

Dominic James Lau @Dom_Lau Jun 14

“This years @England squad have flair, speed, youth & no burdens of expectation. Italy… should be very worried! #WorldCup”

David Baddiel @baddiel Jun 14

“Feel the ‘no expectation this time’ about England has now become an expectation that we will do well ‘cos there’s no expectation”.

According to Bet365, England opened the betting at 2/1, but ended it at 19/20. Uruguay opened at 69/50, closed at 29/10. England expects. Pressure is heaped. Gerrard dares not lose. This is the side that got beat by those makeweights, we can do this.

Newspaper, 18 June 2014

It’s like they knew all along how they were going to conclude this mini World Cup story. In the edition on the 16th, after the Italy match, they ran with the headline “Rooney may yet be middle man”. This was to be located on page 4 of the pullout. Unfortunately for us, it took them two days of news to confirm this. Maybe though, if Rooney scores, they might give him at least a page to acknowledge his achievement? They are crying out for something new to write about, a deviant WAG story, or even James Milner getting a new haircut, just anything will do.

And of course, media training means that our players are all reeling off typical buzzwords, which prevent doubts from being cast, such as “confident” and “prepared”. These days it feels like press conferences are meaningless when it comes to asking managers and players for thoughts, one of the reasons why football is riddled with cliche. Even so, as David Baddiel suggests, “the terrible jackboot of media training means that… footballers seemed to be schooled only in the art of saying nothing at all”.

@1jacobwalker

Newspaper, 16 June 2014

Does the dust ever settle on an England defeat? Rooney or Sterling? Rooney or Sterling? Rooney or Sterling? The football media nexus never ever stops.

Interestingly, Simon Barnes – Chief Sports Writer of the Times until a few weeks ago – gave a clever comparison between journalists and literary writers. He referred to the famous quote by Ezra Pound, an American poet, whereby he said that “literature is news that stays news”. Conversely, Barnes thinks that journalists create work knowing that its lifespan is only a few hours long, with “its ultimate destiny [being] at the bottom of the cat-tray”. He suggests that what is written in a hurry is read in a hurry and forgotten in a hurry. I doubt Rooney forgets it in a hurry though.

Let’s be honest. It’s a terribly boring narrative which serves no purpose. Although, it is engaging because it does stimulate debate, could you imagine if such a national newspaper narrative existed at domestic level? Fortunately, for us our domestic league is so entertaining that we are rarely subject to such headlines. That, and the fact that headlines can be about any of the premier league teams. Or if they’re really really stuck, a quick scout further down the pyramid should result in something worthy of the back pages.

It appears then that there becomes a lower standard of journalism required during a World Cup because journalists knowingly limit themselves to only one subject matter. In this case, England and bloody Wayne Rooney. I don’t want to read it and I’m sure neither does Rooney.

In terms of expectation, England did provide promise in defeat. Perhaps the performance did provide cause for optimism but the result lessens expectation. That’s the theory anyway. Having said that, we’ve still got the whipping boys Costa Rica to play so you can’t rule us out just yet.

Twitter: @1jacobwalker