English Really Know How to Fret
Not to dwell in my American birthright of hyperbole, but from my residence here, it feels as if the smallish land mass of England might’ve unfastened itself from its earthen moorings, split from Wales and Scotland and commenced floating aimlessly in the Atlantic, neighboring the Canary Islands by now for all we know.
Sorry.
It’s just that the Motherland feels spectacularly unhinged after six manic weeks of World Cup build-up, six weeks of first-rate spectacle for an outsider, six weeks fixated on one metatarsal.
A “metatarsal” is a bone in the human foot, a fact English children know better than any children on Earth. On April 29, as his Manchester United club took a drubbing at Chelsea, the foremost talent among the 50 million English, Wayne Rooney, fractured a metatarsal.
Among English all-stars, Rooney’s broken right fourth metatarsal (2006) thereby joined Michael Owen’s broken right fifth metatarsal (2005), Ashley Cole’s broken right fifth metatarsal (2005), Steven Gerrard’s broken left fifth metatarsal (2004), Rooney’s broken right fifth metatarsal (2004), David Beckham’s broken left second metatarsal (2002) and Gary Neville’s broken left fifth metatarsal (2002) to bolster a point:
The English constitution includes stupefying beer capacity and lousy metatarsals.
By early May, we citizens and residents and illegal aliens plunged into the netherworld of excessive knowledge about Rooney, the goal-maker, the exhilarating rough-houser, the inelegant alternative to Beckham chic, the working-class bulwark from a rugged Liverpool neighborhood bound to be rugged with a name like Croxteth.
We learned Rooney would sleep in an oxygen chamber for quicker healing. We learned he danced at the World Cup party at the Beckham palace. We saw this TV teaser: “Rooney Kicks Ball!”
We learned we should hope against hope there’d been sufficient recalcification in the metatarsal, approaching the most-awaited scan in world history in Manchester on Wednesday, or WAYNESDAY, as the tabloid Mirror proclaimed it.
And there’d been sufficient recalcification! And the metatarsal had mended! And the Motherland could turn its attention to ...
Oh, no it couldn’t! There was more, still! Sven-Goran Eriksson, England’s dour 57-year-old Swedish coach and inexplicable woman magnet, said he and Rooney would decide on Rooney’s match-fitness! Maybe June 20 against Sweden!
And Sir Alex Ferguson, Manchester United’s feted manager and keeper of a leviathan self-image, said Rooney’s club should have a say! Definitely not June 20 against Sweden, and maybe not after that!
And there were lawyers consulted, and visions of prospective lawsuits should Rooney compound his injury, and a much-reported telephone call from Eriksson in Germany’s Black Forest to Ferguson in the Swiss Alps or the south of France, or from the Alps or south of France to the Black Forest, during which somebody apparently hung up on somebody else!
And I began to think my native nation mentally balanced, when I do know better.
Why would one metatarsal matter so much? Three small reasons and a big one:
1. England is enjoying a presumably golden generation of football players.
2. England awaited this golden generation of football players even when Rooney was 15 and still throttling kids in Croxteth and other untelevised places.
3. England is a genuine World Cup contender, a second wagering choice behind the Brazilian kings-of-kings.
4. ENGLAND HASN’T WON A WORLD CUP SINCE 1966.
In fact, England hasn’t reached a final since 1966. Number of semifinal appearances since 1966: one. Number of quarterfinals: three. Round of 16 exits: one. Exits in group play: one. Did not qualify: three. (That must’ve been fun.)
This 40-year drought exists and looms and hovers and taunts and menaces and baffles and saturates and starves and unnerves despite England’s status as the home to the most glamorous sports league -- the Premiership -- on Earth, a league boasting 102 of the World Cup’s 736 players, 28 more than any other country’s league.
To have reached not even one World Cup final since a 1966 day when nobody on the pitch or in the stands wore any color, just black and white...
There’s a hunger.
So the other day, the venerable BBC aired more than an hour of live television both boring and jaw-dropping.
We saw the England team’s buses pull up to Luton Airport, north of London. We saw the players disembark from the bus and walk up the steps to the airplane.
We saw the plane taxi toward the plane line. We saw a private jet take off before it. A delay followed, so there was time to outline the menu for the 100-minute flight to Germany: sandwiches, stew, tea, scones with jam and clotted cream.
“You see it now maneuvering into position ... Any moment now
(Sure about that?)
“Its wheels lifting now, carrying the hopes of all England fans into the skies as she takes off into the sunlight!”
All the clotted cream and metatarsals, off into the clouds, the cameras trained on the jet for moments more.
Today ... versus Paraguay.
It’s time.
