England Euro 2020

AlGard said:
Sums up supporting England. I used to go to a few games, but not anymore. Please God don't grant them the 2030 World Cup.

https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/f...omments-england-bigotry-chris-deerin-opinion/
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It's an interesting article and starts well and makes some interesting points.

It strikes me though that a lot of these commentary pieces are guilty of the exact same negative traits that the English are being accused of.

  • Exceptionalism - a belief that one's country or people are superior than another brought about by emphasising your positives and their negatives whilst glossing over your own negative traits.
  • Bigotry, xenophobia - prejudice against a group of people or nationality based on perceived characteristics. Judging entire populations by the actions of a small subset.

"English football is one of the last bastians of overt racism in this country" I think this is incorrect in about five different ways not to mention that part of his evidence for this is tweets aimed at black footballers - a dubious conclusion to say the least.
Evidence would suggest that we're a lot more tolerant than many of our accusors

Don't get me wrong, England has all of the problems they are accused of in this article and we've got to sort them out. Our international image has been trashed recently and with no little justification. England is however still fundamentally a great place with great people.
 
I'll take the hits on my stats and moans....but the two overriding factors...were the amount of hype and waffle before the game....and the fact we got beat by a better team and better, more passionate and turfwise management.
I was very positive about England as a 15 year old... in the Summer of 66 !
 
When Beckham was sent off in 98, we saw nonsense like an effigy of him strung up in the street, with criticism and borderline abuse on the front pages across mainstream newspapers and media.
https://www.standard.co.uk/sport/fo...orld-cup-red-card-mental-health-a4509361.html Similar happened to Phil Neville in 2000. Southgate has never been allowed to forget 96.

The reaction has been overwhelmingly supportive of Rashford, Sancho and Saka from the public and the media. Instead of criticism and abuse being the norm splashed across the headlines, the norm was been a rallying around of those lads. I doubt the first thing that will come to mind when we talk about Bukayo Saka in 20 years time, will be his penalty miss in 2021. This is progress.

That abuse has a) moved into the online world, and b) gotten more extreme and insidious, probably reflects the movement of the wider world online over that time period.

The PL and Kick It Out's own analysis finds that up to 70% of abusive or racist messages towards these players over these Euros were posted from overseas. Although it is impossible to say with confidence where they came from, due to VPN.
https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/s...aces-up-global-nature-online-hate-2021-07-13/

In France, Police are investigating online abuse and racism towards Kylian Mbappe following France's Euros exit. There is cleraly a massive problem with social media, which extends worldwide. https://www.rfi.fr/en/france/20210707-french-police-probe-racist-abuse-of-football-stars-on-twitter

That's not to deny or deflect that more can be done in this country, as can be seen from the Rashford painting incident. Or today the Portsmouth whatsapp thing I've just read about. But hopefully the success of a team that see's players from all geographic corners and most backgrounds of England has and will continue to act as a uniting influence for once, as opposed to a divisive influence as most stuff seems to be these days.
 
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The coke thing is crazy. Seems to really have infiltrated everywhere in the UK. My friend (in the forces so did not partake) was at Wembley and a stranger turned to him with several lines chopped out on his iPhone and said "It's free, mate! Have a go!!!"

AFCB_Liam said:
Difficult one.

It feels like it's easy to blame football, but the problems are deep-rooted societal issues. It's lad culture to the extreme - hundreds of thousands of (mostly) men choosing to use football as an outlet/release, the same way a week in Ibiza going mental is a release.

These are people let down by the lack of opportunities in the UK for working class, made bitter by Brexit politics, looking for an excuse to get wrecked, show off to their mates and get 2 minutes of fame by doing something ridiculous like firing a flare out of their ****************. I was in London on Sunday and the amount of coke being done openly on the streets from early in the morning was insane. It's the same at football matches now, coked-up lads looking to go mad but not necessarily for a fight like the earlier hooligans from the 70s and 80s.

Sunday was a a perfect storm of providing the excuse for hundreds of thousands to congregate on one area (Leicester Square and Wembley), a late kick off time, the build up from a month of hype and woefully inadequate policing and security.

Fixing the security would no doubt have mitigated some of the problems but doesn't get rid of the wider issues. People will continue to act like that. We see it every weekend on the streets of most UK cities, just not at such extreme scale. Not sure how you fix it - countries like Spain and Italy have far worse unemployment than UK for the young, yet you don't see the lad culture there.
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northstandmark said:
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The PL and Kick It Out's own analysis finds that up to 70% of abusive or racist messages towards these players over these Euros were posted from overseas. Although it is impossible to say with confidence where they came from, due to VPN.
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Perhaps this response would've been better placed on the other thread but your post links into the problem with ID for accounts.

If you look at the problem blinkered to only to the UK then there is a case for it so long as you don't ever say anything that could be viewed in decades to come as offensive and completely trust the government.

If you're in a more autocratic or unstable nation then the choice becomes almost impossible.

So you could make it so only UK users need ID but then like you say what if they use a VPN?

You can block words and words that look like words and images of words and images of words that look like words but you can't really remove the sentiment.

What you will probably see over the next 10 years is AI attempting to discover hate speech and then forwarding the candidates onto a small team of native language speakers who will work out if they should delete it or not.
 
Garbo said:
...cutting aside from the social issues of England's population...

It is disappointing that the national team, playing at home in the main couldn't win The Euros when the standard of European international football isn't like it was. The giants like Germany, Spain, Netherlands, and France were ordinary and average IMO...okay Italy flew the flag for traditional winners...but I don't think that we will ever have a better chance to bury that three lions tune and be winners in my lifetime...Gareth did an okay job but I can't see him changing from his defensive plodding style anytime soon and no matter who we have in the team as attacking options he will drop them deep like he did Kane in most games...not playing Jack Grealish and Phil Foden was wasteful...taking an unfit Rashford and his favourite in Jordan Henderson was also foolish...when we could have had Ward-Prowse and Ings, Bamford or Watkins?
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zigger zaggar said:
The police didn't want to get involved at all, they left it all for the stewards to deal with.
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RobTrent said:
Bigger offence being on their phones and not watching the game.
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Along with those who spend all match looking at the big screens to see if they’re on it …
 
OLDSKOOL said:
Along with those who spend all match looking at the big screens to see if they’re on it …
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To be fair Wembley is so big (along with many other grounds)that alot of fans are so far from the pitch it's easier to watch on the big screens. I certainly watched our game at the Millenium Stadium on the big screens ,especially first half.Second half was switching between pitch and screens.
In fact I have a signed limited edition photo which shows Purches goal ,was shown on different screens a couple seconds apart.
 
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