Talent. It is a vital quality for any successful World Cup campaign. Above is Lionel Messi scoring a sumptuous goal against Mexico a few years ago. He has improved since then. It is worth mentioning that Brazillian and Argentinian players, more often than not, make the Sign of the Cross at several key moments in the game and regularly give glory to God when they score.
They also pray to Our Blessed Lady that she will help them and so receive a shower of both talent and maternally bestowed footballing blessings from Heaven whenever they play. You can tell that when Brazil or Argentina believe, the team not only believe in themselves and each other, but believe in God and God, quite clearly, believes in them. There is no other explanation for it. Three lions? Give me strength! If ever a group of men needed throwing to three lions it is the England team!
With regard to England's display against Germany, a display so bad that St Paul would advise us never even to discuss it, I have had an idea. Instead of cutting incapacity benefit and hitting the weakest in society, like we all knew the Conservatives would, I think that the time is ripe to 'hand over' our national team to 'the secular arm' and use their millions of pounds to fund the NHS. Cuts. That's what we need. When do we need them? Now! We could start with £6 million-a-year Fabio "I like being England manager" Capello and work our way down from the top, through to Wayne 'Wake me up when the World Cup starts, boys...Oh, did I miss it, again?' Rooney and Co. Ltd. "I like being England manager", said Capello! Yes, of course you do, mate! You get paid £6 million pound for making the national team look quite miraculously worse than they did four years ago and with a defense so leaky that even BP are horrified! I bet you're being paid an extra £4 million by the Italians! Talk about falling on your feet!
Maybe, we could cut abortions as well, which cost the country quite a bit in terms of human life and money, maybe cut the transgender cuts and make similar incisions into IVF treatments, too. I mean, desperate times call for desperate measures. We're going to have to seriously cut back on the luxuries of child murder, bodily mutilation and embryo harvesting? What do you think guys? David? Nick? George? No? Well, I guessed not. Safer to just hit the poor in the nads and tell them to move to Bristol, eh?
I got back to my car today and the England flag that I had naively bought for 99p from a petrol station in an inexplicable fit of England World Cup hysteria was gone. Clearly some 'Angle' (or was it an 'Angel'?) ripped it off my car in an inexplicable fit of World Cup humiliation and alcohol-fuelled vandalism. I wasn't sad to see it had disappeared.
The great G. K. Chesterton famously said, "When people stop believing in God they don't believe in nothing...they believe in anything". That really does nail our country's transcendant and mysterious faith in the qualities and attributes of the England team quite nicely.
At every World Cup we appear to all begin believing in something that really does not exist, while the teams that actually win the World Cup, invariably believe in Someone who does.
8 comments:
For a bit of fun: The World Cup Finals started with 32 teams. 15 of them are (in one sense or another) “Catholic" countries: Brazil, Argentina, Spain, Portugal, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Mexico, Honduras, Slovakia, France, Italy, Slovenia, Cameroon, Ivory Coast. (I include Cameroon and Ivory Coast as there are – I think – ex-French colonies and therefore perhaps Catholic.) That’s 47%. In Round 2 there were 9 Catholic countries. That’s 56%. In the Quarter Finals there are 5 Catholic countries. That’s 62%. What’s the bet that the semi-finals will be 100% Catholic?
Suddenly, my support for Holland is waning!
The cuts sound a good idea!
Now that Holland and Germany - two nations with a hsitroy of Protestantism who have latterly turned toward modern secular means of governance - have convincingly put out the two largest Catholic nations in the tournament (not to mention the abysmal performance of Italy herself), can you update the post to suggest that Catholicism is not the best way to ensure footballing success or coherence? I think these teams have shown that secularism with a touch of Protestant history ensures the greatest coherence as a unit
I know. It looks like Germany have the Protestant work ethic down to a tee.
Depressing! Come on Uruguay!
Are England one goal better than Argentina?
From wikipedia: "Uruguay is South America's most secular country. It has no official religion and church and state are separate."
Best back the Spanish then! Although they were responsible for England turning away from the Church
Yes, but after the king signed that abortion law can we really support them?
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