The problem really comes down to one word. Unfortunately, that word, the keyword in all this, is one we can't use here. But you know it. It's an adjective, a noun, a verb, and most often an exclamation. When you stub your toe, spill your coffee, or accidentally[全員に返信]You might say it when you realize you pressed
Or, if you're Gary Lineker, you might use it on your podcast to describe England's performance at the European Championships – in this case the team's sleepy draw with Denmark, but it could also apply to the win over Serbia or the draw with Slovenia.
Stripped down to its essential elements, it can be difficult, especially for outsiders, to understand why this term has caused such uproar.
Lineker, a respected former player and wise commentator, suggested England had played poorly. This is true on the surface. England coach Gareth Southgate said after that very same game that they needed to “hit the reset button.” The players acknowledge that they have not performed well so far.
England currently sits at two goals and one win from three games at Euro 2024, reaching the knockout stages despite taking fewer shots than all but a few other teams in the tournament. No one can argue with the accuracy of Lineker's one-liner analysis; if he'd used a more PG-friendly vocabulary, perhaps no one would have noticed.
But the remarks seem to have hurt deeply, partly because the pundit's language, while sometimes vaguely old-fashioned, still avoids vulgarity, and partly because of the extraordinary and somewhat contradictory role Lineker plays in the British football-industrial complex.
He is best known to everyone as the BBC's news anchor for major tournaments and the Premier League, a role that doesn't usually allow him to offer much of an opinion. Sitting in his seat on Match of the Day every weekend, smartly shirted and wearing trainers, he is supposed to be an impartial referee, someone who asks questions rather than answers.
But in recent years Lineker has also become a hugely successful podcast impresario, documentary film producer and all-round media maven – his production studio, Goalhanger, is responsible for four of the top 10 podcasts in the UK – and it was in one of them, “The Rest Is Football,” that he used the phrase.
Of course, on that platform, Lineker is perfectly entitled to express his unvarnished opinions on whatever he likes; he's not bound by the BBC's often arcane conventions. Lineker does all he can to draw a line between his podcast and his TV persona, but this often essentially amounts to being sweary about one and not about the other.
But the differences are subtle, and are reinforced by the fact that two of The Rest is Football's interlocutors, Alan Shearer and Micah Richards, also appear on Match of the Day. To the general public, Lineker is seen as the epitome of neutrality; listening to his scathing criticism is like watching David Attenborough punch a dolphin.
But that still doesn't fully explain why Lineker's chosen jargon has come to dominate discussion of England's Euro 2024 campaign in the last week.
Certainly, there seem to be more pressing issues to address than whether a 63-year-old TV presenter, even a former captain of his country, can use an expletive.
Has Southgate's decision to abandon his usual personality and field a bold, crowd-pleasing team left him in charge of a team he doesn't fully understand? Is this sudden tendency to try out new ideas within 45 minutes and then quickly abandon them when they don't work a good thing? Does the fact that Trent Alexander-Arnold, Jude Bellingham and Phil Foden have all been pointed to at various times as the root of all England's ills suggest that the problem may be structural?
The press's focus on the abuse is hardly surprising: Lineker is a high-profile, polarizing figure, the fight itself is deeply boring, and deep down, everyone loves a fight.
But for the players, it came to represent a more pressing issue: what exactly is the media's role in these tournaments? And it highlighted a long-standing, perhaps irreconcilable, divide over how the relationship between national teams and journalists, former players or not, should work.
“I would never want to be disrespectful to any player, especially one who knows what it's like to put on the shirt and play for England,” Harry Kane said in response to a question about Lineker at a press conference last week. Kane looked a little out of sorts. Clearly, he had come with a message to deliver.
“What former players have to realise now is that it's very hard not to hear that now,” he said. Rather than criticising the team's performance, he feels former players in particular should “be as supportive as possible.”
“Building and developing confidence in the players would be a much better way to go about it,” he added.
Declan Rice advocates the same approach. “When you go into the match, go in with a positive mindset,” he said. “Give your players the best confidence in the world. Tell them they're the best players in the world. Let them read that and think, 'I'm going to go out on the court and play my hardest.'”
In either assessment, the role of each country's media is, as Kane put it, to act as cheerleaders, “supporting during the tournament and judging after.”
Notably, this is standard in other countries too: after Scotland's loss to Hungary last week, an image circulated on social media showed Scottish TV reporters in drab overalls standing next to Hungarian TV reporters wearing their country's team jerseys.
Tensions over the role of the media are not new – Lineker no doubt felt the same way as Kane and Rice during their time with England – but they are exacerbated by the environment in which his successors have lived.
Local newspapers have long been the first line of accountability for their local clubs, but budget cuts have hollowed them out and many (though not all) are tempted to tell readers what they want to hear, rather than what they need to know. Players see influencers who are content simply to bask in their fame as a more attractive readership than journalists. Access to players is more tightly controlled than ever before. So is what they are prepared to discuss.
The conclusion is predictable, but that is not what the news media is for. Lineker, in reply to Kane's reaction (a football pundit snake eating its tail), suggested it was all down to the “insidious” media “stirring the pot”, but that was arguably a bit disingenuous. After all, what is he if not part of the media?
But he didn't need to pass the blame on – his job as a TV presenter and podcast mogul is not to blindly support England.
His assessment was not personal or aggressive. Compared to the venom and vitriol on social media (where hyperbolic negativity is valued), his analysis was relatively mild. His choice of words may have been harsh, like hearing someone badmouth your parent, but it was not inaccurate. It is particularly significant that England's players did not disagree with what he said, simply with his right to say it.
Eurofever: Week 3
Transsalpine Gal Perhaps manager Ralf Rangnick knew what was coming: just six weeks ago, the 65-year-old manager was approaching the peak of his career.
Bayern Munich wanted Rangnick not just to oversee the team, but to reinvent the club – getting rid of the older generation of players, modernizing the facilities and making fundamental changes – in other words, he would have the chance to build one of Europe's greatest football institutions in his own image.
Then, just when everyone thought the deal was close, he turned it down. He said he wanted to finish the job he had started in Austria. At the time, it seemed like a strange decision. Instinctively, you felt there must have been a fight about money, control or something. No one would turn down a Bayern Munich exit in the group stage of the European Championships.
As you may have noticed, it didn't work that way.
Austria, along with Switzerland, enjoyed an incredible run at Euro 2024, beating Poland and the Netherlands and edging out France to top Group D. They achieved this while playing the kind of fast-paced, fast-paced football that Rangnick has long championed and, to some extent, helped popularise, at least in its modern incarnation.
Of course, there's still a chance that Austria's adventure could end relatively quickly, in the round of 16 on Tuesday or even in the quarterfinals. But it's hard not to feel that Rangnick has built one of the few teams in the tournament with a real sense of self – a clear identity, a clear purpose, a sharpened sense of intent. There's a slim chance that Rangnick won't miss his chance to seize the top honours.
Concertina That Austria, and Switzerland – and not forgetting Switzerland – can reach the last 16 with optimism and an open mind is testament to the qualities that make international football an increasingly bright light.
It's hard not to feel like Europe's domestic leagues are protesting a little too much, spending so much time and energy telling everyone how competitive, unpredictable and thrilling they are. Sure, there are upsets and drama, but deep down most of us know that in the end the deciding factor tends to be raw economics.
But that's not the case in international football. Even the best teams have their flaws. France and England have both been boring, Spain and Germany have been impressive at times, and only Portugal seems calm, determined to play the majority of the match with 10 men.
And of course, that means success isn't so out of reach for outsiders who don't have the talent of the favorites, but who have a well-crafted system and a pool of talent. The playing field becomes more even, the gaps narrower, and that creates real uncertainty. That's really what sports is all about.
Dull Edges Do you know who the top scorer at the European Championships is? Yes, it's Own Goal! Own Goal has been a big hit in this tournament! I wonder if Chelsea will sign Own Goal! Or, if they can't, it could be Romelu Lukaku, who is currently in second place without VAR!
These jokes, while of course all very funny and by no means pastiche, sum up very well the dearth of real strikers that is becoming one of the defining characteristics of this era in football. That's not to say there aren't any strikers – there are – it's just that they tend to be very old (Robert Lewandowski), uncomfortable playing up front (Kylian Mbappe) or created in a lab (Erling Haaland).
At the risk of making too bold a prediction, this won't last. Youth development in football is cyclical. Academies tend to focus on developing the types of players that are lacking in the senior game. For a long time, that meant neat midfielders and “inverse” wingers. The next iteration is more likely to be well-built, cold-blooded forwards.