England fans in the FanZone, Malmo

As you probably know by now, I was out in Sweden for the semifinal and final of the U21 European Championships.

Obviously the final was a big disappointment, but we had a quality time whilst we were out there and it was great to see our boys in action (although we didn’t actually see Tomkins apart from during a half time kickabout!).

Something came to my attention yesterday though that I thought was worth raising today – just to see what other experiences people have had whilst travelling with England (at any level it would seem).

Yesterday it was revealed that Michel Platini was thought to be unimpressed with Stuart Pearce’s behaviour on the touchline during the final. Pearce states that maybe he was “overzealous”, but he was just “passionate about winning”.

The interpretation from Platini was that his rants were aggressive…

Make sure you behave

So, during the final there were a few guys on our row who throughout the whole game continued to leave their seats for food, phone calls, etc etc – up and down the whole 90 mins. Obviously when you’re trying to watch your team in a final, it’s not what you want. They never said excuse me or thank you at any point – kind of irrelevant but I wanted to paint a picture and all that.

I was sitting with another England fan, both in our England shirts, watching the football intently. At bad decisions, bad tackles or close efforts, we would both jump up and shout – kind of what you do at a football game. At least I thought.

At one point one of these suits who kept interupting our football stopped right in front of us and gestured towards us and said, “make sure you two behave”.

I couldn’t believe it. I don’t swear, so that wasn’t the problem. I wasn’t being violent, so no problem there either.

It just makes me think that us English are gravely misunderstood on the continent. Our passion for the game is clearly often misconstrued and our anger towards a decision or a bad tackle is interpreted as violent.

And after what Stuart Pearce was saying, it doesn’t seem to matter whether you are a fan or a manager, there is no place for passion or zealous ambition when England are involved….

Anyone else had any other experiences like this, or is it just me and my big loud mouth?

Sam

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Morale generally is at a pretty significant low…the players are down, the Manager is clearly down and I fear that unless things change we might be down by the end of the season too.

We will have no better opportunity to put everything to one side today and focus on supporting the team and fully ‘welcoming’ Paul Ince back.

I know it will be hard if we start the game playing the way we did against City but personally I will be there in my seat in the Centenary Lower putting my all in trying to bring the best out of our players.

I also think, before I go and get my shirt on, that our support for our club today will influence more than just the players…I believe it will influence the opinion of the press about our support and also other fans. If we give either of those groups of people the smallest opportunity to criticise us, they will.

“We are West Ham’s Claret and Blue Army”……….

The starting line up that you want to see (from this POST) reads as follows:

Rob Green
Behrami
Lucas Neill
Matthew Upson
George McCartney
Faubert
Bowyer
Parker
Etherington
Ashton
Bellamy

I have a funny feeling that this might just be how Curbs decides to play it today, especially after Bowyer’s goal midweek. ( I reckon though he might start with Cole and Bellamy may make an appearance later in the game…although Bellers is definitely the sort of player we need on the pitch today)

Sam

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