open letter to Franz Beckenbauer

Dear Franz

I’m an England fan and a blogger who took exception to your recent comments about the standard and quality of English football under Fabio Capello at this World Cup.

To be honest I thought your comments were inappropriate, and I said so in my blog posting (like you care). The reality is that you were absolutely right in your observations. At the national level we play football which is similar to that played on Hackney Marshes.  Today our defence looked like Dad’s Army versus a crack Panzer Division.

Here’s the thing too Franz, our FA is in a complete state of disarray. Because we only appoint people with thin skins and/or with the morals of alsations, we’ve ended up with no Chairman nor CEO. Is there any possibility  you could be interested in heading up our FA as a man of integrity, insight and intelligence? We’ve never tried that option.

Please Franz….

pp

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world cup – the good and the not very good bits

Well it’s turning into a good World Cup tournament. England have scraped through the dreaded group stage which has seen some big beasts wounded and one or two of the aging ones fall. Africa’s put on quite a show but there have been some highs and lows.

defoe defeats ’em

Well, as matches go that was a nerve-jangling belter today. England beat mighty Slovenia 1-0 thanks to a goal from deadly Defoe but ooh it could have gone agonisingly wrong if the leader of the failed palazzo coup, ‘modest’ John Terry, hadn’t shown that he had the right stuff after all and defended as if his life depended on it. Look at that action shot above of JT pulling off the rarely seen sliding head tackle.  

clueless in cape town

That’s it Wayne, have a rant at the England fans. How shameful of them to boo the England team following the abject performance against Algeria last night after some 30,000 of them had spent £1000’s to come out to support you and the rest of the England team. I tell you what son, after your hopeless performance I would have been seriously minded to keep my mouth shut other than to apologise for playing possibly your worst match in an England shirt. And with that outburst I think we can see why you’ll never be fit  to fill the captain’s boots worn by the likes of Moore, Charlton, Adams etc.

egon….gone

Well I heard on BBC World news that Egon Ronay had died. Back in the late 1980’s my inspirational boss Brian took our company Cellnet into a sponsorship deal with the Hotel and Restaurant Guides that bore his name. Mobile phones in those days cost over £2000 and were almost exclusively used by business people, who were key users of the better hotels and eateries, so an association with the most notable reference guide was great brand association for our fledgling company and an invaluable gift to our relatively small number of customers (around 10,000 when we signed the deal).

oops…

Well we arrived at our local Italian restaurant just in time for the opening England match and we missed the first few minutes as he was a little busy and we were the only English folks in there. But generously he switched it on just for us amidst more than a little local tutting – good on yer Giovanni – and literally the first thing we saw was Gerrard’s lovely opening goal. Would this turn out be  goal-fest from the 3 Lions…er no.

busy week-end ahead

Well we’re just off for a short visit to Italy to try and progress some more of the landscaping work etc in preparation for our first guests this summer. It’s going to be busy but will find some time to get a posting done I’m sure. Only worry is will I find a screen over there that’s going to show the England v USA match on Saturday night? Yikes. Not sure that my little dongle (ooh no mrs,titter ye not) will have the necessary bandwith to let me stream the match. Did I tell you that this week I only went and replaced the RAM facility on my laptop – which had gone into panic mode – with a 4Gb upgrade? I’m seriously not joking and it works beautifully. I’m still in a daze to be honest but no doubt cutting down half an acre of 4ft high grass over in Italy (yet again, sigh) will bring me to my senses. Just think in two days time I’ll be setting fire to 7 dead elephants at 5.30am again. Oh and our pool has thousands of frogs in it apparently. Life doesn’t get much better than this.

Come on England!

pp

BGT…

You could have fooled me. Oh dear, we tuned into the third semi-final (surely there can only be two?) of Britain’s Got Talent last night.  I’m even more convinced that they need to add a rider to the title like ‘If Only We Can Find It’ or ‘But Not Much Of It’ or most accurately ‘But Virtually All Of It’s Already Been Uncovered And Now We’re Scraping The Bottom Of the Variety Act Barrel’. The couple of acts who qualified last night for the Final were OK I guess – a singing accountant who still lives with his mum and dad and an impressionist who specialises in mimicking bald men ie Phil Mitchell, Harry Hill and er…nobody else. That was the good stuff.