England took on Hungary today at Wembley Stadium in London, in what was the 8th match out of 10 in World Cup 2022 qualification. England had already beaten Hungary 4-0 away in Budapest earlier this year, but they’re a more talented side than they appear at first and have gotten some famous results earlier this season.
The match ended 1-1, with both goals coming in the first half. Hungary took a surprising lead from the penalty spot via forward Rolland Sallai, who sent England keeper Jordan Pickford the wrong way as he slotted home. The actual penalty was earned by right back Loïc Négo, who collided with a high boot from England left back Luke Shaw just inside the box. The contact on Négo’s head was minimal, but the problem was Shaw having his boot that high up in the first place. It’s a long-established rule in football that your foot can’t be up high near the head and neck of other players, and Shaw has to know better there. He is asking for trouble with his foot that high up, and he wouldn’t have even needed to fly in like that if he was quicker to the ball. But he was lackadaisical in getting over to the bouncing loose ball, and Négo put him under pressure to make a clearance. Unfortunately, he did not clear the ball effectively.
England did get an equalizer 13 minutes later, having put their foot fully down on the gas pedal after the Hungary goal. The tying goal was courtesy of three Manchester City players – Jack Grealish, Phil Foden, and John Stones. Grealish was probably England’s best attacking player the whole match, and he won a foul in the right channel after some of his trademark nifty dribbling. Foden stood over the dead ball and delivered a very dangerous diagonal cross into the box. It was met at the far post by Stones, who simply stuck his foot out and the ball bounced off him and into the net. Wembley erupted in celebration, and it was great to see England scoring from a set piece.
The Three Lions had the better of the chances and the majority of the possession for the rest of the half and indeed the rest of the game, but they could not put the ball past Hungarian keeper Péter Gulácsi. He made several fine saves on Raheem Sterling, but overall the credit must go to Hungary manager Marco Rossi for his tactical set-up. They were in a 5-3-2 and set up very compact, making it hard to break them down. They also pressed England at precisely the right times, and England admittedly lacked ideas in terms of creating chances. I applaud Gareth Southgate for realizing that his initial tactical set-up was wrong and actually making substitutions, but today the problem was that he made the wrong substitution. Bringing on Bukayo Saka for Grealish was mystifying when both Sterling and Harry Kane were far more ineffective. Saka needed to come on, but not for Grealish. He was the only one really running at the Hungary back line, so to take him off almost did them a favor. It was just an overall disappointing performance on the pitch, but credit to the Hungarians for playing well and forcing England to stumble slightly on their path to World Cup 2022.
England are still atop Group I, but their lead has narrowed to 3 points after Poland’s victory over Albania. England have a massive game against Albania in a month, and the last one is against minnows San Marino. Win either of those, England are virtually in. Ideally they would take 3 points in both games, and they will indeed need to be better than they were today against a highly-motivated Albanian team.
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Unfortunately, the first 10-15 minutes of this match were marred by clashes between the London Metropolitan Police and some of the Hungarian supporters inside the stadium. I normally am not one to defend the police, but there is a section of the Hungarian supporters that are absolute knobheads. They held up a banner protesting the England players kneeling before the opening whistle, and were jeering loudly when one of England’s Black players touched the ball. Absolute racist bastards and the images of them throwing punches at the police were disgusting to watch. It seems the police eventually got the situation under control and at least one arrest was made, but I couldn’t believe just how brazen the actions were of those few dozen supporters. I know for a fact that not all Hungarians are racist hooligans, but that loud minority of them is very loud indeed.
Which begs the question: where is UEFA on this? Why has the Hungarian FA even been allotted tickets for their supporters at this match? There is supposed to be a ban on fan attendance at their home matches for this exact sort of behavior the lasttime England played Hungary, so why are they allowed in our stadium? It’s this sort of thing that makes the whole “Say No to Racism” campaign feel hollow and frankly fake. When actual racist incidents happen, UEFA does nothing about them and leaves it up to the local authorities to sort out the shitheads. Hey UEFA, fucking punish this kind of conduct! Lifetime bans for fans who engage in racist conduct. Points deductions from teams if fans engage in racist conduct. I understand that England is not free from sin in this department, so these rules would apply to our fans as well. The fans also must self-police more effectively and call out racist conduct when they see it! I’m fed up with this behavior and it needs to stop.
Today, England travelled to the elegant Puskás Arena in Budapest, Hungary to play their first match since the loss against Italy in the final of the European Championships. The Three Lions came into the match top of the World Cup qualifying group having won all three of their matches so far, but Hungary were a mere two points behind them in Group I.
Although a victory for England was expected, Hungary are not a team of pushovers like they have been in the past. They are well-organized and tactically sound defensively, and that can create problems for any opposition. This same Hungary team pushed France and Germany to their limits at Euro 2020(1), and they were buoyed by the addition of their most naturally talented player – attacking midfielder Dominik Szoboszlai. Don’t ask me to pronounce his name, as the trickiness of the pronunciation is mirrored by the trickiness of his feet. England would need to make sure he is marked at all times because he has the dribbling and shooting technique to trouble even the best defenses.
England took the pitch in front of a packed house in Hungary, and the atmosphere pre-kick off was mostly upbeat. England were on the ball for most of the first half though, and were clearly the better side in terms of possession, passes, and chances created. The problem was struggling to get clear shots on goal. The Hungarians deployed a 5-3-2 formation that made them incredibly difficult to break down. The other side of that though is that they had no presence in midfield and couldn’t get the ball into Szoboszlai or any of their attacking players. I don’t think England keeper Jordan Pickford even touched the ball in the first half, aside from goal kick clearances. A very stale encounter in that first half plus a very hostile atmosphere had me thinking that England may need to be satisfied with a draw today.
But England upped the tempo a little bit in the second half and Hungary struggled to keep up. Harry Kane just missed a gilt-edged chance on 50 minutes after being through on goal. It was a good save from keeper Péter Gulácsi but you feel that given Kane’s quality he should have scored. But no worries though, as Hungary were undone just 5 minutes later. West Ham midfielder Declan Rice did well to win the ball in midfield, and he played a quick pass out to Manchester City midfielder Jack Grealish on the left wing. Grealish brought the ball to edge of the area, after he which he played in fellow midfielder Mason Mount on an overlapping run towards the end line. Mount used his quickness to get to the ball and drag a cross back along the ground, directly into the path of the unmarked Raheem Sterling. Sterling had to be quick, but it was a relatively simple finish into the bottom corner with Gulácsi unable to get to it. Good team goal from England and it was 1-0. The celebrations for Sterling were marred by some poor behavior from Hungary fans in the stands, who decided it would be a good idea to throw full bottles and cups at Sterling from the stands. More on Hungary’s fans below.
The second goal came via the talismanic Kane about 8 minutes later. Sterling found himself under a bouncing ball on the right wing, and he hit it first time low and along the ground towards Kane in the middle of the box. The ball took a bounce off the foot of a Hungarian defender, which caused the ball to pop up in the air a bit. Kane was able to get his head to it with enough power to put it through the arms of Gulácsi for 2-0. Always good to see Kane on the score sheet and he atoned for his earlier miss with that header. Now that all 3 points were in the bag, you could see England relaxing a little and just seeing the game out.
That didn’t happen though, as center back and Manchester United captain Harry Maguire was next in the queue to score England’s third just 6 minutes later. The floodgates had well and truly opened, as Kane was unlucky not to get his second just before Maguire’s goal. Fellow Red Devil Luke Shaw delivered in a peach of a cross from a corner, and Maguire did well to position himself under it. He headed the ball down and towards the opposite corner, but it didn’t appear to have a ton of pace behind it. Gulácsi couldn’t get down in time to save it though, and it rolled in after taking a deflection off his arm. Good teams can score in a variety of ways, and England showed they are capable of that by finally executing a set piece. Our defenders are so big that we should be scoring more often from those.
The fourth and final nail in the coffin came on 87 minutes, and this time it was Rice both finishing the chance and somewhat creating it. Kane had just missed another chance to score, and Pickford had actually made his first real – if routine – save of the game just after that. But Grealish was involved once again as well, and this time he got an assist. Rice played the ball to Grealish on the right side of the box. Grealish then cut in from the right side using his dribbling and looked to be trying to create space for a shot. He was blocked off though by defenders so he wisely played a backwards diagonal pass back to Rice, who was positioned for a shot on the edge of the box. He passed the ball with the inside of his foot towards the goal, and it was straight at Gulácsi. He really should have done better with the save, as he seemed to drop it and the ball went under him before it went over the line. Still, poor keeping or not, you have to have the temerity to take on that strike and Rice should be credited for going for goal.
So yes, 4-0 away in a hostile atmosphere in a competitive match is about all you can ask for. England were patient in the first half, and that patience was rewarded with dominance in the second. Hungary may feel that poor keeping did them in today, but England’s first goal had nothing to do with Gulácsi. Once the first one went in, you felt the result was never in doubt. Hungary were just lacking the quality going forward today. It’s an over-simplification to blame the keeper in this case, despite his notable errors.
The behavior of too many of the fans in Budapest was very disappointing, not only due to the bottle-throwing after Sterling’s goal but they also booed when England players took the knee before kickoff to protest racism in football. Hungary’s players were very professional in this match and credit to them for showing their fans that is possible to lose with dignity and grace. But that fanbase has a reputation for poor sportsmanship and FIFA must take action to regulate this sort of thing if they are serious about stamping out hooliganism and fan violence in this sport. UEFA has already sanctioned the Hungarian Football Association and had this been a Euro qualifier the match would have been played in an empty stadium. But it seems that FIFA and UEFA don’t carry the same punishments for whatever reason. I am sick of this pigheaded behavior from supporters and it needs to stop. England fans are no exception to that, either. There are too many England fans who behave this way too, they just weren’t on TV today. It is always difficult for me to call out this behavior from other countries when England’s house isn’t fully in order.
But in terms of the match, this was a very good performance from the lads and exactly what England needed to exorcise a few of the demons lingering after the loss to Italy back in July. Coming out against decent opposition, away from home, and putting 4 past them in a span of 32 minutes is just what the doctor ordered. England were already in the driver’s seat in this group, but now World Cup qualification seems much closer despite the fact that there’s only been four of ten games played in this campaign. Hungary are probably the second-best team in the group (aside from maybe Poland) so England can take confidence from the way they handled themselves today. Composed and clinical after a potentially-frustrating first half. Man of the Match for me is Declan Rice, but a case could be made for Sterling, Grealish, or Kalvin Phillips.
England take on minnows Andorra at Wembley on Sunday. An emphatic win is expected against such a small nation. England are now 5 points clear on top of Group I.
I apologize for the tardiness of this blog but it’s been a very emotional 24-48 hours since the final penalty was taken in the match. The loss of course is one thing, but then there was the resulting fallout from it as well. I think it’s probably best to discuss the match itself first and then go over the shitstorm that happened afterwards.
The atmosphere at Wembley on Sunday pre-match was electric, and it must be said that the overall vibe was a positive one. There had been some skirmishes with some idiot England fans trying to get into Wembley without tickets, but again those were minor when compared with the overwhelming majority of fans who were there to have a good time. Choruses of “Sweet Caroline” rung out around the ground in the lead up to kick off, as England fans celebrated their first men’s final in 55 years.
And things went from a reserved frenzy to a raucous celebration just 2 minutes into the match when left wingback Luke Shaw was found in the box by a cross from fellow wingback Kieran Trippier the right hand side. He hit it towards the Italian goal and keeper Gianluigi Donnarumma could not get to it as it crept in just inside the left-hand post. It was clear from the outset that Italy’s initial tactical set up was all wrong. They had come out in their usual 4-3-3, while England manager Gareth Southgate had changed his formation again and set up England in a 3-4-3. Shaw and Trippier were overwhelming them in the space on the wings, and the Italians could not figure out how to mark them with a back 4. Declan Rice and Kalvin Phillips were also dictating the possession and tempo in the middle of the park, and for the entire rest of the first half Italy looked rather toothless. Italy forward Federico Chiesa put a shot just wide of Jordan Pickford’s goal after a long run with the ball, but that was Italy’s best chance. The one negative from the first half is that England did not score a second goal, but the way the match was going you figured there would be an opportunity for another one.
But Italy manager Roberto Mancini is no stranger to adversity, and he made some key changes that really swung things back in Italy’s favor. He took off ineffective striker Ciro Immobile and brought on attacking midfielder Federico Bernadeschi, which immediately gave the Italians more fluidity in attack. Along with the urgency of knowing they needed a goal and fresher legs in midfield, Italy really pressed England for about a 10-15 minute spell in the early second half. They were unfortunately rewarded for their efforts after they won a corner, which was tapped in to the back of the England net by center back Leonardo Bonucci after a mad scramble in the box. England failed to clear the ball and Bonucci was in the right place at the right time to make England pay. Sometimes, that’s all you need.
Italy continued their dominant spell for another 10 minutes or so but could not find a second goal. England had a little more possession in the final 10-15 minutes, but solid Italian defending and closing down in midfield prevented England from mounting a serious attack. Southgate had indeed brought on help in the forms of Jordan Henderson, Jack Grealish, and Bukayo Saka, but I felt that those subs were too little and too late (more on that below). In the end no more goals were scored and extra time would be needed.
Extra time in a major final is nothing new of course, but I was worried about our fatigue levels given the lack of substitutions. I thought that Mancini had done a better job of getting his tired players off the field, even if one or two of them were necessary changes due to injury. I was more than relieved to see Chiesa go off injured late in the second half. I don’t wish injury on any player, but he had been tormenting England all match and was Italy’s best attacking player on the day.
Italy dominated the first 15 minutes of extra time, but England fought back a little in the second 15 minutes with some better possession and movement around the box. Center back John Stones barely missed getting his head on a cross from Shaw, but there were no serious attempts on the goal. There was a moment where I thought defender Giorgio Chiellini would be sent off for a foul on Saka, but the referee only showed a yellow. I felt it probably should have been a red given the egregious manner in which Chiellini grabbed Saka’s shirt color and yanked it back, but I am not sure how much of a difference it would have made that late on in the match anyway. The referee definitely let a lot of contact go in this match and generally tried to let both teams play. That is fine when it helps your team and it’s what the neutrals would be happy to see, but it’s maddening when it cuts against your team.
Forwards Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho were indeed subbed on, but only with about two minutes to go in extra time. I was happy to see those two come on, but it was far too late for them to get involved in the match. Penalties loomed and a nation held it’s breath. Once penalties were confirmed, I was trying to be optimistic. This group of players beat Colombia in a World Cup elimination game on penalties in 2018, so they knew how to win one this way. Higher stakes this time of course and England do have a long history of penalty failures before that, but there was reason for a degree of optimism going into the pens.
I won’t go through it kick by kick because most people saw what happened and it’s too painful to type out anyway, but Italy won 3-2 after a save from Donnarumma on Saka with the fifth and final penalty. Rashford and Sancho missed penalties as well, with Harrys Kane and Maguire converting theirs. Pickford produced two fine saves to keep England in it, but Saka’s penalty was too low and lacked power. Donarumma was the hero on the day, and Italy were crowned European Champions. I turned the stream off and walked away for a bit. I was absolutely crushed, and you could tell Saka, Rashford, and Sancho all felt horribly too. I think it is fair to say that having a 19 year old take the fifth penalty, which is often a decisive one, was an error in judgment from Southgate.
But that was not his biggest error on the day. Saka and Sancho hitting a weak penalties and Rashford missing altogether were also not the main reasons for the loss. Penalties are a crap shoot and anything can happen when the match gets to that point. The principle reasons for the loss were not killing off Italy when we had them on the ropes in the first half, and then failing to respond quickly enough to their tactical changes in the second half. Mancini did not play a perfect match tactically, but his adaptability and willingness to take risks was what won his side their first European title since 1968. He saw that what he set out with wasn’t working, so he took a gamble or two and it paid off. Of course, it does become easier to gamble when you have the defense that Italy has. The center back pairing of Bonucci and Chiellini is world class, simple as. They were excellent at keeping Kane and Raheem Sterling at bay for all 120 minutes. Those two have been England’s best attacking players all tournament, but they were largely anonymous for most of the match.
If England are to win a trophy with this current crop of players, Southgate must be willing to be more adventurous when the time is right. Yes, the conservative approach got us through the first six games, but in a final sometimes you have to take risks and go for the goal. I do not trust England on penalties and we should never try to play for penalties. We were not explicitly doing that in the final, but Southgate was unwilling to change things despite conceding a goal that looked like it was coming for at least 7 or 8 minutes. Sancho and Rashford should have been brought on in normal time, not 2 minutes before penalties. Grealish should have been brought on before the 70th minute. There should have been some kind of tactical plan for more outlet passes from the back to relieve the pressure the Italians were pouring on the back line in the lead up to their goal. The goal may have still come anyway, but England would have been much more suited to getting a second one if he had been less rigid in his approach.
So yes, to lose a major final at home like that is heartbreaking. It’s not an enjoyable experience in any way. But what was even more heartbreaking was the response to it from fans, the media, and even the British government.
Within minutes of England being eliminated, hate speech and vile racist attacks came pouring in from supposed England “supporters” on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. I won’t repeat what was said but suffice it to say that it was just some of the nastiest things one could say to another person. Rashford, Sancho, and Saka got most of the attacks and many (false) correlations were made between the race of those players and their ability to take penalties. There was even an Australian newspaper that ran a later-retracted headline about England’s Black players missing while the white players scored. A mural of Rashford in south Manchester was also defaced with racist language and symbols.
It’s fucking disgusting. That’s all there is to it. You would have thought that by the year 2021 we would be done with the farcical concept of racism, but the reality is that it has only gotten worse in recent years. It definitely seems to be worse at the least, due to the fact that every idiot with a pair of thumbs can express his/her asinine opinion and share it with the world instantaneously. Social media platforms claim they are trying to fight back against hate speech online, but that’s a hydra that is difficult to slay. As soon as you shut down one idiot, two more pop up elsewhere. It should be no wonder why England players took a knee before the kickoff of every match at this tournament to protest against racism. It is clearly still needed.
England fans already had a reputation before this tournament as being rowdy and block-headed, and we’ve done ourselves no favors with all this idiocy. Immediately after the wave of racist nonsense came in, another of wave of hatred pervaded the internet in response. This time though it was a different set of people calling out the racism of our supporters and generally lampooning England as a nation. It was hard to see that as an anti-racist England supporter, but a lot of it was justified. This country does have a problem with racism and it must be addressed. If it takes national embarrassment to get that done, then so be it.
I am no sociologist and I do not know how to fix the problem entirely, but one thing that would help immensely is if UK politicians like Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Home Secretary Priti Patel stopped stoking the fires of discrimination among their constituents. Politicians like those two were elected on nationalist/exclusionist principles, and in the past they frequently targeted dark-skinned immigrants as being the source of many of the UK’s problems when pushing for Brexit. Both Johnson and Patel were quick to condemn the racism from social media, but that was a very hypocritical position to take when it’s primarily those two and their party responsible for a good portion of the racism in the first place. England center back Tyrone Mings was correct to point that out, and his tweet response to Patel went viral almost instantly. You cannot claim to be against racism when you’ve spent the last several years subversively promoting it!
But in the darkest hour for England, there was light at the end of the tunnel. Kane, a white man and England’s captain, posted a condemnation of racism on his social media that provided me a sense of relief in it’s strongly-worded tone. Kane is normally somewhat tepid and lukewarm on issues that don’t directly involve football, but the message of “we don’t want you” re: racist supporters was unequivocal and it was the exact message needed. I echo his words now: if you are racist, you are not an England supporter and we don’t want you.
I was further emboldened by the response of Rashford and the support for him on social media. As toxic as some people were, the real England fans showed up to support the lad when he was being attacked. Rashford admitted his penalty wasn’t good enough, but he refused to apologize for being a Black man and of course he shouldn’t have to. Rashford is 1000x the man any of the racists are. He’s spent the past 1-2 years feeding schoolchildren and funding literacy programs. He even went toe-to-toe with PM Johnson himself when it came to school meals during the pandemic. He has donated roughly £20m to charities in the past year, which is more than his entire net worth. He was recognized for his services by the Crown as well, who awarded him an MBE. Rashford is the shining example, but many England players have made great contributions to the communities they grew up in.
The support for the statements of Rashford and Kane was overwhelmingly positive. For every idiot racist sounding off, there was 10 more people in full support of everything these lads have done and are doing for this country. It was absolutely vital that they got some support from English people, as that has not always been the case in the past, even for extremely popular (white) players like David Beckham and Wayne Rooney. Becks was hung in effigy outside pubs in London after his red card against Argentina in 1998, and Rooney was the target of threats and personal attacks after his own red card against Portugal in 2006. Yes England lost in disappointing fashion, but the cycle of attacking our players when they don’t perform for England seems to be breaking. We need to be encouraging these players and helping them remain positive. Having them terrified of playing for England will not result in success. Toxicity only breeds more toxicity.
This team’s run to the final captivated and united the nation, for the most part. We played well for long stretches in the final as well, and for 60+ minutes we were European Champions. I could not be more proud of them and the manager, and that sentiment is shared by many. In many ways, this whole incident showed both the very best and very worst of social media. You had the vile racism at first, but the swift condemnation in response to all of it was nothing short of positive. Even the normally-alarmist British tabloids were mostly supportive of the lads post-match.
The damage to Rashford’s mural was covered with messages of support written on bits of paper and England flags, and earlier today the street artist who initially did the mural was out there repairing it.
If we want England to have any degree of success over the next 10-15 years, we have to continue showing support like this. If the players are able to put their club tribalism aside and play for one another, then so can the average fan. This tournament and the subsequent fallout I think created a strong bond among these England players; a brotherhood of sorts. They know they’re good and they know they can do well at tournaments, and if they can get through this level of fallout they can get through anything. All we need to do as England fans is keep supporting them and they will eventually bring us another trophy. Getting to the final was a huge step in the right direction and I think there will only be more growth as the team grows and matures. Many of our players this tournament were still very young, including Rashford, Sancho, Saka, and Jude Bellingham. They are only going to get better. If they know England fans are going to be behind them even if they lose a close match, that will only make success more likely.
This England team under Southgate might be the one to bring us success on the pitch, which is why I titled this post as “It’s Not Coming Home (This Time)”. We will have more chances to win with this group, as we have shown that we can play with anybody. Reaching the semis in 2018 and a final in 2020(1) is already the best I have seen England do in my lifetime. At this tournament we beat the Germans, scored four in a knockout match, and went to our first major final in 55 years. More importantly, their efforts off the pitch may end up being a catalyst for real societal change in the UK as well. Mark my words – these players will make history one way or another.
Lastly, I’d like to thank everyone who read these blog posts during the Euros. My readers are of the utmost importance to me and I hope it was informative and entertaining for you all. It truly was a great tournament marred only by the actions of a small amount of knuckle-draggers.
I shall now be taking a few weeks off from the blog as there is a lull in competitive football matches in late July/early August. United’s pre-season gets underway soon, but I’ll do a full season preview for that once the Premier League is closer to returning.
Manchester United traveled to the Midlands to take on Wolverhampton Wanderers (Wolves) at Molineaux last Monday night. Wolves were a very difficult team for United last season, having lost to them both in the FA Cup and in the Premier League. Wolves’ Portuguese manager Nuno has the team well-drilled and they have talented attacking players. Fun fact: Wolves have the most Portuguese players out of any team in the Prem!
Meanwhile, the Red Devils looked to exact a bit of revenge for last season and continue their amazing start to the season after the victory over Chelsea in the opening match. In these early games you want to establish momentum and set the tone for the rest of the season. As the old adage goes: you can’t win the title in the first 10 matches of the season, but you can certainly lose it.
For the duration of the first half, it was all United. Although the opening 20 minutes or so were slow, United created the better chances and dominated most of the possession. They were rewarded for their dominance when Anthony Martial capped off a lovely move down the United left side with a stunner into the roof of the net from a tight angle. The buildup to the goal was phenomenal to watch, with Jesse Lingard, Luke Shaw, and Marcus Rashford all getting touches before Martial slammed it home. Congrats to Martial on scoring his 50th goal for United! He looks really at home in the center-forward position, having been shoved out to the left last season to accommodate Romelu Lukaku. Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has shown a lot of faith in Martial by giving him the No. 9 shirt back, and so far Martial has rewarded him. I want to see how Martial does when things get tougher down the road and the goals aren’t flowing as freely. He has a tendency to get down on his confidence which negatively affects his game. When his head is up though, he’s a force to be reckoned with.
Martial almost got a second one thanks to a lazy pass from a Wolves defender just before half time, but he was knocked off the ball at the last second and the chance was gone. It was a controlled first half for United, but I was concerned that we would need another one to really solidify the odds of victory. It’s very difficult to keep a clean sheet in the Premier League due to the level of talent up and down the table, and even more difficult to do away from home. A cauldron like Molineaux is certainly no exception to that.
Wolves didn’t really get anything going until the 60th minute or so, and their ascendancy was aided by Spanish winger Adama Traore coming on. He tormented United down the right side and created some of Wolves’ best chances, including the cross that fell to Portuguese striker Ruben Neves at the top of the penalty box. He took a touch and United’s defenders were slow to close him down, and he struck an absolute belter past the outstretched arm of David De Gea for Wolves’ equalizer.
I can’t really be too mad about the goal itself. It was a wonderful goal from a good striker. The defense could have closed him down quicker, but you can’t take too much away from Neves. Fortunately, United still had plenty of time to find a winner.
They almost did a few minutes later when French midfield superstar Paul Pogba was fouled in the box by a Wolves center-back. It was stonewall penalty and could not have been any clearer. Pogba decided to take the penalty he had earned himself, and while his strike was powerful it was too close to Portuguese keeper Rui Patricio who saved down to his right. Pogba pulled his shirt over his head in shame and Wolves players celebrated.
A lot of people have focused on their criticisms on the penalty miss, and I have to admit I was confused by Pogba taking it as well. For those who don’t know, each time has their own methods for deciding who takes penalties when they are awarded. I am just honestly unclear as to what United’s particular procedure is. For example, the German national team has a rule that whoever wins the penalty does not take the penalty. I don’t know why they do it that way, but it seems to usually work for them. Some teams have a designated penalty taker for each individual game, and still some other teams designate a player who takes penalties until he misses one. After that, the job goes to someone else. I was under the impression that Rashford was our current penalty taker, not Pogba. Rashford has been cold as ice from the spot recently, while Pogba has missed four of them in his United career. I personally think Rashford should have been on the ball for this one. If he was, maybe it’s a different result. More on Pogba below.
The penalty miss sucked, but what concerned me more though was our inability to create chances in the second half. We looked flat and Wolves were all over us. Frankly, we were lucky to not concede a second. I didn’t really see a clear opportunity for United again until well into stoppage time, when Shaw smashed a shot directly at Patricio. The match ended rather flatly, with both teams clearly tired.
A draw is better than a loss, but given how well United played for most the game (in particular by the defense) a draw is still disappointing. We played much better at Molineaux this time than we did last season, but still only came away with a point. I know Wolves will cause problems for a lot of good teams this year, but you walk away from this one feeling like points were left on the table today. Still, 4 points from Chelsea and Wolves is not a terrible start to the season. United are at home to Crystal Palace next Saturday morning America-time.
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After the match was over, Pogba was the target of racist abuse by some asshole idiots on Twitter and other forms of social media. They were pissed at him because he missed the penalty and decided to show their lack of intelligence through racial slurs behind anonymous online accounts.
This needs to stop. Period. It’s the third time this week that black players have been targets of racial abuse, and it’s completely disgusting. You can be mad at a player for not playing well or missing a penalty or whatever, but there is never, ever, any reason to use racist language against them. It’s maddening and these cowardly bastards are mostly getting away with it.
Twitter needs to do more to control racist speech and abuse online. I understand in America that racist language by itself isn’t illegal, but in England and in other parts of Europe it decidedly is. I think it’s getting worse due to 1) more visibility and media coverage and 2) an increasingly polarized society where it is tragically becoming more acceptable to be racist.
Of course, even if Twitter does tighten things up with their #KickItOut campaign, it’s only a band-aid on the problem. We have to address the root cores of racism in society overall instead of just fixing the behavior of football fans. Ignorance is the enemy of progress.
Shout out to Harry Maguire, Rashford, Lingard, and the club itself for calling out these morons and standing with Pogba. It’s good to see the players standing up for one another and the club vocally supporting them as well. I hope Pogba keeps his head up and pays no attention to them. He gets more than his fair share of criticism as it is.
I touched on this issue in an earlier post but I think it’s a big enough and important enough topic to merit it’s own post. I usually go out of my way to not mention politics or social issues on this blog, mainly because I speak on those topics frequently in every other aspect of my life. However, sometimes sports and social issues intersect, and it’s impossible to not talk about them.
Full disclosure for those who don’t know what I look like, I am a white guy of mostly northern European descent. People who look like me are often the perpetrators of racist conduct at European football matches, while people who don’t look like me are often targets. As such, I am very aware that I may not be the most qualified person to talk about what it’s like to experience racism. For what it’s worth though, I absolutely abhor the concept of treating someone negatively based solely on the fact that they’re skin color is different from someone else’s.
One of the main problems is that I am not sure other football fans agree with me on that last point. Now, if you were to interview every individual football fan in Europe and ask them about racism, I would be highly surprised if you found a person openly in favor of racist chants, gestures, and slogans directed towards Black players. There might be a few sociopaths out there who would admit to it, but the overwhelming majority of people (football fans and otherwise) would publicly agree that racism is a bad thing. But, get a few drinks into a large gathering of several hundred/thousand supporters, and you might see people’s true beliefs come to the surface. When people think their controversial views will be supported by people immediately around them, they are much more likely to vocalize them. Group-think and mob mentality are dangerous things for this reason and many others.
But for those of us who do agree that racism in football is a massive problem, how do we go about getting rid of it? How do we get rid of racist pricks doing monkey chants at Black players during matches? Well, a number of solutions have been proposed. FIFA, UEFA, and the various football associations had their “Say No to Racism” campaign that they stopped doing in the early 20-teens, but clearly that didn’t do much as racism still persists today. I have also seen individual supporters accused of racist acts given lifetime bans from attending matches. That’s somewhat better in my opinion, but again it clearly hasn’t solved the problem. England and Tottenham striker Harry Kane (who is white) has said that one solution is for players to walk off the pitch in protest as soon as racist chanting is heard. While that is indeed a noble idea on its face, it is perhaps a tad naive. Idiotic racist supporters may think they have somehow “won” and could reinforce the validity of their ideas in their own minds, and additionally I wouldn’t put it past the morons who run FIFA/UEFA to screw the protesting team out of a winning result should they walk off the pitch while ahead.
I think the issue right now is that these proposed solutions are band-aids on the problem. You can easily put a band-aid over a nasty scratch on your arm, but really what you should be doing is trying to correct your behavior so you don’t get scratched in the first place.
When it comes to issues concerning Black people, I think we should ask Black people what to do about fixing the problem. One person that I highly admire who fits into that category is former star England and Liverpool winger John Barnes. Barnes endured his share of racist abuse in the 1980s and 90s, and in his retirement he’s become a respected pundit and coach. Here is what he said after England players were racially abused during an away match in Montenegro earlier this season:
“We all suffer from unconscious bias, based on what we have been wrongly told about people. Now it’s very easy to come down on…the two racist football fans and Montenegro, but what is more pervasive in society is the unconscious discrimination that people face because of the average person being unconsciously biased towards different groups of people because of what we have been wrongly told. And this is what we have to challenge.
In another interview, he added:
“Just by saying it is wrong to be racist and saying we are going to arrest people and kick them out of stadiums does not stop them being racist. Why should racism go away when we are not tackling it in the right way? We are influenced by what we see in the world and what we see in the world is certain people being considered more worthy than others – and we continue to see that. There has been hundreds of years of indoctrination and conditioning for us to feel superior as white western Europeans to others. We have to deconstruct the idea of racial superiority. We have had it for hundreds of years so it is not going to happen overnight but we have to tackle it in the right way.”
Of course, Barnes does not speak for all Black people. Other players, like current England and Manchester City superstar forward Raheem Sterling, have their own ideas about how to fix the problem. He has called for point deductions and better self-policing among fans in various interviews. The idea being that if one fans hears racist chants, that fan would do his best to stop them so that the team is not penalized. I also think a fair amount of public ridicule from non-racist fans would also go a long way towards making cowardly racists keep their views to themselves. These also could be potent responses to the problem, and I do like the idea of fans taking more responsibility for the conduct of others in particular.
I think if you blend together the ideas of Barnes and Sterling, you would begin to see change. It would be slow, but it would gradually happen. Barnes is basically saying that racism is pervasive in football (and sport in general) because it is pervasive in society, and he is absolutely right. We have to teach people, especially younger children, that no one is superior to anyone else based purely on skin color. Yes, people can look different from one another. But we have to eliminate the idea that “different” is somehow equal to “bad” or “inferior”, because its simply not true. Your DNA is 99.9% similar to every other human’s on the planet.
Better education on this specific subject is vitally important to eliminating racism at the societal level, and sport will follow in turn. Education, along with fans taking the initiative to stop racism if/when rears it’s ugly head, is probably the most effective way to tackle the root cause of racism, instead of just treating the symptoms.
The same thing should be done here in America. Racism is just a prevalent here as it is in Montenegro, Italy, Spain, and the UK, if not worse. Of course, solving America’s racial issues might be even more complex than solving Europe’s.
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