The Football Association was offering £60 for a family of four for tonight's friendly against Hungary, but it was not clear whether that was a ticket price or a bung on offer to the hard-up and masochistic. Even with an inducement, there will be parents reluctant to expose their children to the torpor England brought to the World Cup.
Under the Wembley arch/gibbet a conundrum presents itself to St George's hardcore, that swarm of serial forgivers who swallow the give-us-one-more‑chance rhetoric, however strong the evidence for refusing to do so. Many fans are all heckled out. Ennui prevails. Premier League escapism looms.But to be North Korean in their acquiescence would imply an acceptance of something far more objectionable than mediocrity (though there was plenty of that, too), so there is a raging temptation to give Fabio Capello's team and all they represent the giant raspberry.
Capello has erected the village stocks on the Wembley pitch, insisting that the culprits from South Africa take the hail of rotten fruit and inviting the crowd to "get it out of their system" when what they probably want is to get half these players out of the team. The group boo replaces the group hug as a means of "closure". This will confuse many younger spectators, who may need help from mothers and father to let them know who the bad guys are.
The England coach had not displayed any signs of caring what the multitude think until he witnessed post-Africa the emotional and financial whiplash from England's collision with a familiar reality. He hopes the flagellation will all be done in one 45-minute period, during which he can apply earmuffs to Jack Wilshere and Kieran Gibbs, who lead a group of fresh faces who have not been exposed to the cycle of hype and under-achievement since 2002 – or 1966, if your prefer.
As Capello is at a loss to properly explain the listlessness of England in Cape Town and Bloemfontein, it is no safe bet that he will be able to shield the latest recruits from its debilitating effects. One explanation that seems to have escaped the coach's attention is that this generation are now deeply fatalistic. After repeated experience of failure and recrimination, they no longer believe England are capable of winning international tournaments and merely brace themselves for the moment when it all goes wrong. Robert Green's howler against USA is believed by some in the England camp to have had that catalytic effect.
Plainly the next wave of talent need to be quarantined from that negativity. They will hear older players grumbling about Capello and sense the barely suppressed despair of the Wembley crowd. In these circumstances, it is Capello's duty to persuade both the audience and the 38% of Premier League players who are English that he is serious about purging those players who have provided incontrovertible evidence that they will never win an international trophy.
By adopting the naughty schoolboy approach, he appears to believe his senior players were oblivious to the disdain that accompanied the second-round loss to Germany. His popularity in the dressing room plummeted in South Africa and now a sincere attempt to force his squad to take responsibility for their feebleness by encouraging the crowd to boo could swell the ranks of conspirators. A better message is that Gibbs and Wilshere, Gary Cahill and Joe Hart are the future, and that the future starts now rather than at half‑time.
Lessons are always administered when the Magyars are in town, and the FA is lucky that reflexive loyalty precludes the Wembley crowd from delivering one of their own.
The nuclear option remains unused. From the days when England's followers were the nastiest on the international circuit an era has arrived when they are just too nice to enact the one protest that might force reform: a boycott that would threaten to crush the FA under Wembley's vast running costs and compel the game's rulers to look for a solution beyond £6m-a-year big-name managers.
Jeer and forget is Capello's instruction to the fans, who now doubt his managerial touch and are dismayed by the wooliness of his reflections on the World Cup campaign. For him, too, the next few England games are a referendum on whether the vows will be renewed, whether hype's organ can start up again. To boo or not to boo, that is the question. But there is a better one: to attend or not to attend.
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