“Cross of St George has been reclaimed”
Is a quote taken from the article, It’s a line used by the reporter expressing the gratification; The Pride of being able to wave the Country colours around with no shame at all. Shame that was brought to the country by ‘racist bigots’ referred to by the reporter was all diminished by the newly found maturity coming from England as a whole. This article is not talking about England’s performance but talking about how well the country reacted to Brazil knocking England out. Instead of the usual bitterness we all expected from England, instead they grew as a nation as they saw David Seaman break down into tears as his supporters joined him brazenly. The reporter compares this World Cup to 98’s misfortune featuring David Beckham’s sending off leading to pure brutality released from the English fans. The comparison helps the reporter to back up his opinion of England being a different Nation to the one before The World Cup 2002.
So many other articles correlate with this one as they refer to about the nation’s well mannered behaviour. Articles such as the one done by Patrick Collin’s from ‘The Mail On Sunday’ link with this one.
It’s a game of two halves: The overpaid and The exploited
This Article relates to the article “Have we seen the re-birth of England?”, but The Author of this article (John Humphrys) has many other perceptions of England’s World Cup Campaign. The article reviewed prior to this one was based on the dawning of a more mature nation, whereas the writer of this article expresses his dissent for the sudden change of attitude.
“As for the present World Cup, it’s been a bitter disappointment – and that
has nothing to do with Friday’s game.
This is a quote taken from the editorial which proves his contempt for the new found maturity in England as a soccer nation. In fact as a person who doesn’t care too much for football, he relies on Soccer Hooligan’s to help prove the bad influence it has on people. He clearly shows his disappoint with the statement…
“…we have been let down badly.”
The article was swaying from his disappointment to even questioning the disappearance of strident nationalism. It is written as if he wanted the hooligans of English football to reek havoc. Would this nature of opinion come from a fellow English man? That’s still yet to be seen as John Humphreys is Welsh. He even questioned why the Japanese showed approval of England despite their history – past wars. This writer has already expressed his opinion of football having nothing to do with what it is but instead being linked with previous negative engagements with native sides.
But that wasn’t all that bothered John Humphrys (Author of the article) he showed how apathetic he was about football being now ‘serious business’. He also expresses his contempt about the unfair pay to players in lower divisions as the following quotes also prove;
“It cannot be right that a top Premiership player earns two or three times as much in a week as a skilled player in a lower league earns in a year…..”
&
“Manchester United made £23m last year from flogging merchandise, most of it grotesquely overpriced kits...”
The Author now views football on the whole as a commercial profiting scam exploiting it’s devoted fans which includes changing the team’s strips so often, he refers to it as just as frequent as David Beckham changes his hairstyle. He also stresses the biased attitude towards Top League player’s against skilled but lower league players. This article is viewing football in a different perspective coming from an anti-football fan.
Look ahead now to the glory days
Voice Of The Daily Mirror reflects on the positive sides of England’s World Cup. Instead of placing blame on David Seaman they’re trying to make us see the key saves he made which saved England from making an earlier exit. The article talks about Sven Goran Eriksson saving England in the qualifying stages. It also praises Beckham for being good spirited
“If David Beckham represents the image of this country at the start of the
21st Century, there is a lot of hope for us.”
The article even mentions the fans proving that hooligans aren’t the true face of English fans. The article talks about all the positive sides of England’s World Cup Campaign on a whole. Concluding it, he asks us not to dwell on the defeat served by Brazil but to look forward to victories in the future.
Learning to love glorious failure
This is the closest article to actually discussing the match but it is still more of a TV Review. This article is one of the few if not the only article that hasn’t praised England’s behaviour as a nation. It was written by Martin Kelner for The Guardian. It briefly goes over past disappointments and that our children need to prepare for disappointments in English football. But the article details more on ITV, speaking of the pundits and their interesting remarks regarding the match. The title speaks for it self as the article is partly learning to accept and grow with ‘glorious failure’.
I was assigned to analyse and compare these articles, to look into the media of this particular aspect of the World Cup. Most of the articles I had gathered were very similar in content so I chose not analyse them all but the articles which viewed things with a different perspective. I noticed that they all tended not to talk of the match itself but drew our attention to positive sides of the Brazil victory over England. It consisted more of the Nation’s good behaviour and to be proud of what England has done. However one article displayed total negativity towards Football as a whole especially English football.