It seems that the England football team are going through a bit of a popularity crisis. Well, the England men’s team are anyway, but we’ll get onto that later. Can it be true? Is interest in our national team at an all-time low?
Let me set the scene for you. It’s Saturday night, you’re heading out for the evening to some local drinking establishment, and then maybe on to some trendy discotheque where you just may romance a young lady. What’s the perfect start to your night out? Why of course, it’s watching England play a crucial European championships qualifier at home to Slovenia.
Does this sound like your Saturday night? The watching England part, anyway? Well if so then you’re in the minority. Because on Saturday night more people were watching Pointless. The ‘hit’ BBC game show that I didn’t entirely grasp the concept of from my two minutes of watching it.
Going head to head with England/Slovenia in the fight for TV ratings, Pointless pulled in 7.26million viewers at its peak. While England’s comparative figure was just 6.3 million. And remember, this isn’t just another Sven Goran Eriksson friendly where 11 players change at half time and the whole thing is a bit of a farce. This is a qualifier for the Euro’s against one of the better teams in our group.
This article is in no way raving about the virtues of Pointless, nor is it selling the show short. But in a week where England were playing a big qualifier and a friendly against rivals Scotland, interest in the national team should have been near its highest. The game shouldn’t have been beaten by a fairly average quiz show.
One thing that you can say for the England v Slovenia game is that at least 82,000 people made it to Wembley to watch the game in the flesh. The same couldn’t be said for the September friendly at home to Norway, when the stadium was left less than half full with just 40,481 fans in attendance. A lot has been said lately about how that figure compares to the England women’s side who are about to play Germany at Wembley.
The ladies have already outsold that Norway game with their own upcoming friendly, and it’s expected that ticket sales could pass 50,000 by the time kick off comes on Sunday. Admittedly England women have a little history on their side with added interest due to the fact that this will be the first time that the ladies team has played at Wembley, plus the fact that it is Germany they are playing. But something doesn’t quite add up here.
With all due respect to the women their club game doesn’t come close to attracting the TV viewers and ticket sales of the men’s game. So why is it then that the men instantly lose the appeal that makes them household names when throwing on an England shirt?
It’s quite simple really. When we watch England (or anyone for that matter) we want two things. We want to believe in our team, for them to earn our support. And we want them to entertain us.
It’s these two points where England are failing. We want to believe in them but how on earth can we? So many false dawns, so many broken promises. Every major tournament saw so many of us truly believing that our boys could do something special. That they could actually bring home some silverware.
We had the golden generation. Beckham, Scholes, Lampard, Gerrard, Owen, Gary Neville, Ferdinand, Terry, Ashley Cole and others. World class players seemingly incapable of performing on the world stage. We’re grown-ups, we’re not stupid. There are only so many times we can be let down and still hold onto our blind faith.
Then, there’s that second one. Entertainment. For better or worse, 7.26 million people watched Pointless for no other reason than to be entertained. They all obviously felt that they had a better chance of being entertained by Pointless than they did by England. And they were probably right.
I’ll use the same logic again. We’re grown-ups, eventually we learn. Too many times before have we been bored watching England. Bored when we should have been screaming at the TV while at our most passionate. Even when England were winning stadiums were quiet and asses were firmly planted on seats.
England will need to change their perception drastically and will need to do so by addressing these two points. Whether they can is anyone’s guess, but we’ve been let down so many times before that unfortunately, if I had to guess, I’d have to say that they probably won’t.
One thing's for sure though, if it carries on like this for England then it could be Pointless, X-Factor, Eastenders or any manor of crap that could safely be considered better entertainment then the national team.