“Divots all over the pitch,” said Guy Mowbray, the BBC commentator, midway through the second half yesterday. Which I thought was a bit of a harsh thing to say about an England side who were finally coming into something that could almost be described as “form”.
Still, it’s all about opinions and at least Mowbray didn’t have to spend all that much time talking about the state of the playing surface, which had bothered a few people in the run-up. (It had something of that fabled Wembley-style tendency to ride up with wear — most welcome in a new suit, but less so in a football pitch.) Mowbray, by the way (and this may have escaped your notice), is the new Motty — the commentary-box jockey whom the BBC is trusting to guide the nation all the way to the World Cup final, whether England are in it or not. And perhaps England had better not be in it, given the amount of time Mowbray spent yesterday appearing to have a nervous breakdown on our behalf. “My goodness!” he shouted, dithering like Corporal Jones in Dad’s Army, “I hope your nerves are OK at home!” At this rate he won’t get beyond the quarter-finals.
Still, there’s always the side-attraction of his fast-emerging straight man/funny man act with Mark Lawrenson. Mowbray tees them up, Lawro knocks them down. “It’s called tackling, Guy,” says Lawro.
“I’m with you,” says Guy.
“I’ve noticed,” says Lawro.
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K’tish!
No? Ah, well. Even Morecambe and Wise had to work at it.
Anyway, with one bound — or, to be more specific, with one slightly scruffy and ultimately clock-watching 1-0 victory over a country with a population equivalent to Greater Manchester — England were released. They’ll have to win it now, surely.
They’ve beaten Slovenia.
Gabby Logan grabbed a post-match interview with the England manager, who looked as close to relieved as a lump of weathered granite ever can. “The mind now is free,” said Fabio Capello, who finds conversational English a challenge even when he isn’t standing on the edge of a football pitch and having to shout to clear a full frogs’ chorus of vuvuzelas. “What?” he added. “Thank you very much,” he said, by way of conclusion.
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No, thank you very much, a grateful nation doubtless chorused at its screens. Capello’s tactics yesterday included, after 85 minutes, sending on a big, lumpy forward who could double up as a centre back. That’s why they pay him the big bucks. He also completely threw the BBC’s studio pundits, who were smugly confident of a diamond formation with Steven Gerrard in the centre. Only Roy Hodgson, the Fulham manager, stationed at pitchside, was suggesting that Gerrard would, in fact (and exactly as it turned out), be on the left.
Cut back to Lee Dixon in the studio. “If he’s playing on the left-hand side today, we should all pack up and go home,” the former Arsenal defender said. Something, there, to clip together with Alan Hansen’s pre-match remark to Alan Shearer — “I can see goals, Al” — and slip into the file marked “They Don’t Really Have A Clue, They’re Just Very Adept At Pretending That They Do”.
Here’s the thing, though: all it really took was a change of channel. On ITV, with Adrian Chiles in the holding role, England laboured. On the BBC, without those tiresome Lucozade ads and those football-playing Hyundai hatchbacks all over the place, they somehow looked that little bit more engaged, that little bit more coherent, that little bit more like a team that could make it through to the knockout stages. Redemption was just a click of the remote away.
Which is bound to leave you asking the question about Capello: should he have made sure they were on the BBC before? For £6 million a year, would that have been too much to expect?