World Cup Special: It's Mourning in England (Matlin)

Last Saturday night, Team USA was knocked out of football's World Cup. But how many Americans noticed? According to an “in-depth” survey carried out after the defeat by Ghana, most were unaware of the World Cup, , and the vast majority of those who recognised something was happening didn’t really care that much.

(OK, full disclosure: the survey, better known as a straw poll, was carried out by the writer who e-mailed and skyped a number of friends and relations in the States.)

A day later, England was defeated by Germany, the olde football enemy. Since 1966, the one time England won the World Cup, defeating the Germans in the final, Germany has had the high sign over the English: 1990 World Cup, 1996 European Championship, and now England's worst-ever defeat before its biggest-ever audience.

It's safe to say many noticed. The good people of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have wallowed in our dismay. Television and newspapers have carried out a 48-hour post-mortem on the woeful performance of the England players. Those who were enthusiastic are now merciless.

The story is not confined to the sports pages. It is front page news, with the castigation of overpaid players, some of whom earn £6 million –-- that’s pounds not dollars –-- before they receive cheques for endorsements and image rights. The England manager is paid £4 million and probably has a large severance package waiting for him at the end of the week.The diatribe against all concerned in the England defeat will be conducted not only by the media and the pundits but also by the 30 million prospective new England managers until mid-August, when the football season starts here. Then much will be forgiven.

I have asked myself why things are so different in America. Sure, I expect the people of Indiana were put out when the Indianapolis Colts were upset in this year’s football (American rather than international version) Super Bowl but was there a call for mass punishment or at least dismissals? Not really

It's just not the same because it is rare for America to produce a national team. In American football, this has never happened --- after all, there is no other nation to play, except maybe for Canada (and with their inferior variety of the game, they could easily be vanquished). The Olympics are a debatable exception --- basketball, baseball, andice hockey are graced by Team USA --- but the traumas are few and far between: the 1972 basketball upset by the Soviet Union (and they cheated, they had to have cheated) has faded, and so what if the US got trounced by the Cubans at some random point in baseball?

So this week, when those EA readers who are American contemplate the difference between our two countries, please know that a depression, both emotional and economic, will have settled over England and will not be lifted for some weeks. If our neophyte Prime Minister, David Cameron (who apparently watched the World Cup debacle alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel) and his coalition partners looked for a Three Lions win to relieve the economic plight of this small island, they have been sadly disappointed.

We English are now officially in mourning.

World Cup Fever: When the US Beat England (Haddigan)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYFl6oOad3E [/youtube]

As perhaps more than a few of you may have noted, the World Cup ("soccer" if you're in the US; "football" if you're in the rest of the world) opened yesterday in South Africa with a 1-1 draw between the hosts and Mexico.

Here in Britain --- or in the "England" part of Britain --- even the excitement of the first World Cup in Africa is secondary to the near-novelty of an English match with their former colony, the United States. Thoughts of a special relationship have gone out the window, and --- on a personal note --- there's been 15 seconds of media infamy. Local broadcasters and press have been at EA's door because of an American who supports England and his two half-English, half-American children who back the US.

It's a near-novelty because the two countries have met before in a World Cup match. Lee Haddigan takes us back to 1950:

Sixty years ago the England football team wore blue shirts for the first and only time.



They were participating in their first World Cup. The English had declined to enter the first three tournaments, from 1930 to 1938, as England didn’t need a competition to consider themselves World Champions. It was England’s game and their gift to the world; the World Cup was little more than a means of finding out who was the second-best team in the world.

England was only persuaded to enter the 1950 World Cup in Brazil as a sign of international cooperation in the new Cold War era. And, after a 2-0 victory against Chile in their first game, England approached their next match full of their usual self-assurance. The manager rested Stanley Matthews, a figure comparable to America's Babe Ruth in English sports folklore, but otherwise fielded a star-studded team. Billy Wright, Tom Finney, Stan Mortensen played that day, all legends of the English game, and all in those blue shirts.

England ran out onto to the pitch at Belo Horizonte to face a team of American part-timers --- no-hopers --- who had lost a warm up game 9-0 to Italy. Ninety minutes they trudged off, defeated by "the shot heard around the world" as the USA team were carried off by 20000 cheering Brazilians.

In the world of sporting shocks, nothing comes bigger than the USA 1-0 victory over England in the 1950 World Cup.

Before the game the bookies were offering the odds of 500-1 for a USA win: bet $1 and you would have won $500. It was such an unlikely outcome not even the wildest gambler, armed with inside information and a crystal ball, would have made it. But it happened, thanks to a pass after 37 minutes from a student accountant, Walter Bahr, headed into the net by Joe Gaetjens, a part-time dishwasher and meatpacker from Haiti and to the goalkeeping of Frank Borghi, a funeral director and D-Day veteran, who saved shot after shot in the second half as England piled on pressure.

The result was met with disbelief and disgust from Newcastle to London. Some papers ran the story with a black border round the page, a layout usually only employed with the death of a member of the Royal Family. Even the staid Times of London reported the result as a "sensation’.

By contrast, the result excited little interest in the US. The team returned to no fanfare or acclaim, never to play together again, their result unacknowledged until the 1994 World Cup in America.

By that time it was too late for Joe Gaetjens to receive the recognition he deserved for "the shot heard around the world". He did not play for America after that World Cup, and went back to Haiti to run his own business. In 1964, he disappeared, never to be heard of again, an apparently innocent victim of Haitian leader Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier’s secret police.

The bookies are not offering 500-1 against the US this Saturday. They rate the US as a 13-2 shot ($1 wins $6.50), with 11-1 to repeat a 1-0 victory.

After the supposed certainty of 1950, only two things are certain in 2010. First, England fans are not as confident this time about an easy England win.

But more importantly, and you could get a million against one from a bookie on this, England will not be playing in blue shirts.