Turkey’s Brass Neck

‘TONIGHT and for one night only England play Liechtenstein at Old Trafford.

Beckham gets in practice for his crucixion

The minnows of European football are one defensive slip away from being mighty, challenging and surprisingly better than the average nth-rate amateur side.

There are no easy matches in international football – unless your team are any good.

But hush this traitorous talk, this is England. And England have David Beckham, who has wrapped himself in the flag like a hero – or a travelling England hooligan.

All the papers seem to have the same shot of Beckham, his hair down and eyes fixed in a steely gaze as if ready to take on and slay anything that happens his way.

Let’s just hope it‘s not an angry mob of the sort England expect to meet them in Istanbul in a month’s time.

The Sun looks forward, in every sense of the phrase, to the showdown in Istanbul and sees yet more of that lovely headline-making trouble.

“Turk chief raps Sven,” says the paper’s headline. “Crazed Turkish football chief Haluk Ulosoy [he’s so mad he’s changed his name to Hanuk Ulonoy in the Mirror] ripped into Sven Goran Eriksson lat night,” says the story.

“How?” ask we non-crazed readers of the English newssheets.

Well, the paper reproduces the words of a lunatic, delivered in response to sane Sven’s claim that England fans will die in Turkey.

“I think he has forgotten Heysel,” says Ulusoy. “The only reason he does not want England supporters in Istanbul is because they’ll see their team defeated.”

The rantings of a madman indeed. What is this Heysel he speaks of? And since when have England ever lost an important football match? Pah! This fellow’s a menace to society.

And there’s more from whatshisname, thanks to the Mirror.

“Anyway he [Sven] will be sacked from the England job after the game because he will have no credibility left and he will only be fit to mange the national team of Patagonia.”

That’s rubbish. Patagonia has no national team. Put that in your kebab and smoke it, mate.’

Posted: 10th, September 2003 | In: Back pages Comment | TrackBack | Permalink