English Squaddies

The main news thus far in England was the announcement of the squad. That being the final 23, and not the semi-final 30. The conjecture and rumour about the make-up of the party for the finals reached fever pitch in the last few hours leading up to Tuesday’s 3pm FA announcement that Wayne Rooney would be going to South Africa. There was a mass hysteria on Twitter as rumours started to leak in the climactic last few hours. For some people it was the X-Factor-isation of the FA. It just made me wish that Twitter had existed in 1998 when Gazza went mental.

As rumour after rumour leaked, apparently via players’ agents, the nation took it’s shock omissions on a piecemeal basis. It led to many people posting stats about why Darren Bent was more prolific than Emille Heskey or citing the amount of Spurs games Matt Dawson has appeared in compared to Ledley King. It was all a little bit pointless as the nation’s bloggers and twitterers were essentially arguing about who would warm the bench for 3 weeks as all the contentious decisions were about people who will not get near the pitch. Matt Dawson will no more play than Matthew Upson, one will just get a nice relaxing holiday – while the other will probably have to report back to pre-season at Spurs a few weeks early (haha – you see what I did there?).

There was, of course, one decision which people deservedly raised their eyebrows at – namely the inclusion of Shaun Wright-Phillips at the expense of Theo Walcott (at least that’s what everyone has decided was the decision, Capello has never stated it was one or the other, it was though wasn’t it?). The news was apparently a massive blow to the young Arsenal striker – as one might expect his hat-trick during qualification had at last seen him back up a bit of the hype. As have about 3 goals for Arsenal. In FOUR years. He was the big story last time with his shock inclusion by Sven and yet was as he done since? (And shush the people asking me what SWP has done in 4 years, that’s not important right now). I think the other City wideman, Adam Johnson has more to be aggrieved at for the inclusion of his pint-sized team mate than Walcott. My advice to Walcott would be to stop being an exciting prospect and produce some consistency at club level – but carry on writing the books. I hear they’re excellent.