talkmagic.co.uk

I agree, I think it's all a bit sad. Maybe if I followed football I'd hate the English a bit more

Then I was mostly brought up outside of the UK, so I maybe missed a lot of it...

To go back to making fun of Americans - - I think they understand less about football than me! (not sure if this will link outside of facebook...)

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These things are usually just fun banter, Dave's Scottish and he's always getting into English-Scottish debates in the pub. It's usually all good fun and none of it's taken seriously. It's just the odd few people who do take things too far that turns it ugly. Wouldn't the world be nice if we'd all just get along.

Sk8r St3v3 wrote:Well i am pure English, and although i am against flaming/insults against our Country/team, i hate football, and i think its pointless, so i cheer for every team we face against.

I refuse to watch overpaid young men kick a ball about and pretend they broke their ankle every 5 minutes when people are suffering all around the world...

I am not a huge sports fan and I agree with the above. The worst is golf. I think its a pretentious sport for the wealthy. With our eroding environment, millions of acres being destroyed, species being killed off at an alarming rate, forests devastated. I really think that there is a better use of our earth then take up hundreds of acres for 18 holes of golf that only a small percent of the population can actually play.

My father watches golf. He gets upset when I tell him that it is actually an illusion, the ball goes down through a series of tubes, however the camera pans up giving the illusion of the ball sailing through the air.

Lady of Mystery wrote:Wouldn't the world be nice if we'd all just get along.

nah...far more fun to enjoy the bristle and the banter...

i think its fair enough, we take the Scots oil, they get to vote in our parliament and hate us cos our team is better than theirs...

i dont have much to hate on the footie lads either, who wouldnt take all that money if they were offered it? no one is forced to go and see it are they? self-generated money and all that..well...unless you go bankrupt...

it doesnt come out of my pocket, so i dont care...

i hate it though when the americans say "soccer" is pointless and lacks skill...they dont see the irony in the majority of their most popular sporting events...especially the "world" series...

though i think we should use the whole of Ireland to put the scots, welsh and irish on...let them all fight it out...

As an Irish man the casual anti-English feeling has always embarrassed me. Often you see a hotel or tourist attraction with all the EU flags, and the Stars and Strips, fluttering outside, but no Union Jack. This is just wrong. I have rarely met an English man I didn't like.

On the other hand, football is just wrong too. What a waste of the time and energy of grown men.

Funny auld world, isn't it? I mean there's also fellas out there who play football at the week-end, follow their favourite team, attend a few matches and what have you and THEY can't understand grown men standing up in front of complete strangers and playing with toys under the guise of "magic"..................

Who'd have thunk it???

Are we English really any better though? I was at my brother's last night and they were all cheering on Mexico. When I asked why Mexico he said they'd cheer on anyone playing France, it seems quite a common sentiment. So is the English, anyone but France attitude any better than the Scottish or Welsh attitude towards England?

It all seems very silly to me, personally.

It's sort of like basing your national identity on which foreign countries you hate.

There is this belief that our greatest rivals are the Germans (something to do with a couple of international incidents at the beginning of the 20th century, possibly) and that there is this mutual hatred and conflict between the two nations on the sports field. Whenever the two sides compete against each other, the English fans always act as if it's the most important game of the tournament as it's no longer about the trophy but now it's about these two titans facing off against each other to see who is best and to settle the matter once and for all.

Problem is, the Germans really don't see the English as their great rivals. The Germans consider the Netherlands to be their great opponents and really don't care about the English. The English are just another team to them, they get much more satisfaction from beating the Dutch.

That probably makes it just a lot more humiliating whenever England get knocked out in the quarter finals by the Germans as they don't even regard it as any more important than beating any other team in the tournament.

... and you should see the Greeks and the Turks. Now that's proper rivalry.

themagicwand wrote:... and you should see the Greeks and the Turks. Now that's proper rivalry.

When I worked in a book shop I used to wind up the lovely Turkish lady who looked after the travel section by asking her if the books about Cyprus should go with the books about Greece. She never responded to me in English but I always got the gist of her meaning!

A J Irving wrote:
When I worked in a book shop I used to wind up the lovely Turkish lady who looked after the travel section by asking her if the books about Cyprus should go with the books about Greece. She never responded to me in English but I always got the gist of her meaning!

In my wild youth, I travelled from Athens to London on what used to be called the Magic Bus. It was basically a rather run down coach driven by a rather run down Greek coach driver who also smuggled copious amounts of cigarettes and alcohol. The coach was mainly full of Greeks on their way to the UK.

At one customs check point, the coach pulled up next to a car with Turkish plates. The car was occupied by a man, a woman and their two kids. You would not believe the grief that the Greeks on the coach gave the Turkish family. There were middle aged and elderly Greek women physically hanging out of the coach windows to shout obscenities at the Turkish family and make rude gestures with their hands. I was a very shocked 23 year old themagicwand, I can tell you.