gut­ted

Well, we are. Gut­ted. Eng­land were defeat­ed today by Por­tu­gal in a PSO, the dread­ed “penal­ty shoot-out,” which means that after you’ve played the whole game and you’re tied, in this case “nil/nil”, the out­come is stripped to just this: a kick­er, and a goal­keep­er. The oth­er play­ers all stand in a sym­bol­ic row, arms around waists, for both teams, while the kick­er kicks into the goal. Each team gets five tries, and if one gets to three ahead of the oth­er, it’s over.

But the real dra­ma was with these two pic­tured above. For one thing, David Beck­ham is the heart and soul of the team. An hour or so into play he was kicked, or wrenched his shin, or some­thing, and after con­tin­u­ing to try to play for a few min­utes, gave up and was invalid­ed out. It was announced lat­er that he tore his Achille’s ten­don. Enough said. UNTIL the arguably most impor­tant actu­al foot­baller, Wayne Rooney, got into a tus­sle over the ball with two Por­tu­gal play­ers and after com­plete­ly stomp­ing one in the groin, then went on to shove away a Por­tu­gal play­er who came to “help” with the ref­er­ee’s deci­sion. Result, RED CARD. It’s almost com­i­cal, the so-called “book­ing” process of penal­iza­tion. The ref­er­ee actu­al­ly pro­duces a col­ored card (begin­ning with yel­low and pro­gress­ing to red for a dou­ble offense) from his pock­et and waves it in the air. But in this case, as when a small boy on a play­ground moves straight from “dare ya” to “triple dog dare ya” with­out the cru­cial “dou­ble dog dare ya” in between, the ref­er­ee skipped right from neu­tral to red card, with no yel­low card warn­ing in between. So as pun­ish­ment for a child­ish tem­per fit, Rooney was off and Eng­land were reduced to 10 men, minus as well their captain.

They were valiant, how­ev­er, and until the loss at the penal­ty shootout played bet­ter than they had all the World Cup long. End of sto­ry. There are peo­ple cry­ing in the streets. And let me tell you: I kind­ly let John off pick­ing up Avery at Anna’s, in the penul­ti­mate moments of the game, and got in a taxi myself, the radio in the cab­by’s spot blar­ing loud­ly. Aside from the occa­sion­al ran­dom Russ­ian or Amer­i­can tourist, there was NO ONE on the streets. I have to won­der what will hap­pen to all the pent-up ener­gy in the pubs, not to men­tion in the lit­tle Ger­man town where the match took place. Eng­lish fans are noto­ri­ous­ly dif­fi­cult, even in tri­umph. Who knows what will hap­pen in defeat.

So there you go. Quite heart-wrench­ing. What will pen­cil-thin Vic­to­ria come up with to say to her man, when he limps off the pitch? What will the new queen of the WAGS (“Wives and Girl­friends” of the foot­ballers, to the unini­ti­at­ed), Coleen McLaugh­lin say to her best guy Wayne Rooney about his tem­per fit, pos­si­bly lead­ing to the loss of the match? Much bet­ter to be us, who can shed a tear and then move straight on to the com­pelling bat­tle at… WIM­BLE­DON! Right now it’s Mur­ray against Rod­dick. John and I are going on Wednes­day, so I’ll be sure to have a great court-side report for you then.