England

Taylor Made: a cynical look at the A to Z of footballers’ origins

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Jake and Bill

Bill Taylor remembers someone says football becoming like watching their Italians play your Italians. If he is right about the authorship of the quote – he thinks Len Shackleton may have said it – and a quick internet search did not help – imagine what Shack would have made of today’s Premier League. Bill wonders whether it’s time to acknowledge that when we shout for our team, we’re really shouting for ourselves …

Too much is never enough – songwriter Jim Steinman

Whore (verb): to compromise oneself for money

Perhaps we’ve been doing this all wrong…

A popular question for visiting writers of Who Are You is, “Club or country?” [It was a stock question but you remind me I have not asked anyone in ages – Ed]

I don’t remember anyone ever putting country first. This might, I’m beginning to think, be a mistake.

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Big Sam Poll: amid FA dithering, are Sunderland entitled to closure?

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[polldaddy poll=9472902]

Apologies for typos that appeared in an earlier version: an unedited draft somehow managed to replace the finished article and this remained in place, with spelling mistakes, until spotted …

No one knows, or no one is saying, when the FA’s three wise men will put us out of our misery, and end the damaging disruption to Sunderland’s pre-season preparations, and announce their decision on England’s new manager.

Perhaps we have no real right to place our own concerns above those of England, much as some of have felt detached from the national team for years.

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Big Sam and England: oh, won’t you stay?

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Jake's take on Big Sam: 'another prep-season threatening to go tits up'
Jake’s take on Big Sam: ‘another prep-season threatening to go belly up’

So within a day of an unnamed Sunderland AFC source assuring The Northern Echo and presumably others that Sam Allardyce’s abrupt departure from the Austrian trainingcamp had nothing to do with the England job, he pops up at the Cheshire home of David Gill, FA vice-chairman and one of the three wise men deciding who should follow Roy Hodgson.

Also present, along with what the Daily Mail calls Sam’s “£1,000 Louis Vuitton man-bag” containing his presentation, were the other two members of the selection panel. In other words, it was a job interview

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Now the Euro Brexit for the pampered products of England’s failed academy

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Bravo George Caulkin, self-described ‘chronicler of misery for The Times (North East football, mainly)’, for that clever piece of gallows humour tweeting. And now over to Pete Sixsmith, our own chronicler of doom punctuated by the odd shaft of light. Watching England was indeed like watching Sunderland for the first 30 games of most seasons. Sixer rises from his sick bed after a week of pain and discomfort to carry out his own Ofsted inspection ..

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Euro 2016: Sixer on England yobs, warlike Russians, reckless Cana and (elsewhere) Yedlin

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Sixer looks forward to days in the sun
Sixer looks forward to days in the sun

Monsieur Salut writes: Pete Sixsmith makes 10 points from the opening sequence of the Euros but I seem to have reduced them to seven. I began yesterday in a rage against the moronic English ‘fans’ who, as I have witnessed at first hand, are as obnoxious a group of people as you’d hope not to meet. But if they – and of course I mean the sizeable minority of trouble-seeking louts – had already behaved atrociously in one of my favourite French cities, Marseille, their lowlife thuggishness was more than matched by an evil bunch of Russians, in particular, and by some French ‘fans’.

Pete fears there will be trouble wherever England play, even when the English are not wholly or even mostly to blame. As for the football, disappointment for England, a dark start for a man with SAFC pedigree – Lorik Cana, who must have even Lee Cattermole tit-tutting – not to mention another red, albeit away from the Euros in the Copa America) DeAndre Yedlin – and a great opener for Wales. Now let Sixer admire French stadiums and French midfielders …

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Jermain Defoe: Roy Hodgson’s missed open goal for England may be costly

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Jermain Defoe. Cost us nowt. Saved us £100, million.
Jake: ‘France has been wet lately but Hodgson’s a lot wetter for ignoring our man’

A little while ago, back in February as it happens, we published the view of an outsider, Mark Smith, a freelance sports writer based in Prague, that Roy Hodgson should take Jermain Defoe to the Euros. The case got stronger, of course, but the deafness afflicting Hodgson got worse, too. It’s heartening when neutrals see things the way we do, too, but in a partisan way. Here, another writer, Darren Moore, a freelancer based closer to home (Scotland) laments Defoe’s utterly predictable exclusion from the squad and suggests England may suffer as a result …

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Win a trip to the Euros: Hodgson snubs Defoe, who should go?

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Jake: 'simply a top man'
Jake: ‘simply a top man, to anyone not called Roy’


Win a trip to the Euros … read on

Roy Hodgson has probably worked out where Sunderland is on the map but not clearly enough to make him select an in-form striker, who grabbed an astonishing tally of 15 Premier League goals despite playing for a team that spent most of the season in the bottom three.

So no room for Jermain Defoe at the Euros 2016 in France. Roy did include in his provisional squad a well-known Championship player, Andros Townsend, and a man who doesn’t quite match Jermain’s standards of clean living, Jack Wilshere.

And SAFC fans who turn out at the Stadium of Light on Friday may well see Jordan Henderson, long lost to us as a player but still a fan, in the England friendly vs Australia. Since Roy’s a linguist, this link helping him find our ground is in French.

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Could Jermain Defoe be in Roy Hodgson’s squad for the Euros?

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Can Jermain make the Cherry pips squeak?
Can Jermain make Roy peer north of Watford, staying east?

When the question was first raised, Monsieur Salut’s instinctive response was along the lines of ‘Hodgson doesn’t really know where Sunderland is, so is unlikely to see Jermain Defoe play unless we’re away to and being beaten soundly by a London side containing one or more of his favourites’. But the questioner persisted with the result that we have now a guest article, from Mark Smith, a sports writer based in Prague, weighing up the pros and cons of Defoe’s case for an England recall …

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