Football Poets

The final word from Berlin

¶ 1 Leave a comment on verse 1 0 And so we bow our heads again
The final word from Berlin
Is Auf Wiedersehen Gareth
Or maybe not
Once again England slump
To the ground
Heads buried in silent
Incomprehension
The pain of defeat
Indescribable
It could have happened
But somebody lost the script
Now that’s simply careless
Saturated, sodden and soaked
In anonymity
The Iberian peninsula
Now laughing sadistically
In the face of English
Inadequacy
First it was Italy
And now Spain
How can we ever face
Those smug waiters
From Barcelona?
Cruel, sadistic pleasure
Carved deeply into their faces
Creases and wrinkles
On their foreheads
Grinning with sheer delight
Those English will never learn
That’ll teach them
To mock Torremolinos
And those distant holiday
Stereotypes of donkeys
In shopping bags,
Sombreros flopping
Forlornly at Customs
England, desolate
The darkest hole of
Despondency
It’ll never come home
In fact, it’s still stuck
In a Madrid department store
Gathering dust
Look at that lonely
Baggage carousel at Berlin
Airport, oh woe is an England fan
It could hardly be further away
From home
It’s marooned at a German car park
Of course we believed
Because we fondly thought
We had this one in the bag
Yamal, Williams, Ruiz,
Morata
Simply Spanish obstacles
Barring our way
World class performers
Certainly not
And yet they were
Unmistakably so
England, those cocksure peacocks
In white
Masters of hubris
Arrogant beyond reason
They only had to turn up
On the night
Simply not the case
It’s not coming home
Rather retiring to
Some desert island
Where none can bother them
A floating island of insularity
Passports lost
We’ll eventually find our way
Home but not today,
Nor tomorrow or tonight
And yet if only Cole Palmer’s
Stunning shot and equaliser
Had broken open the treasure chest
The folks back home
May well be on your side
But lightning has struck twice
And now it’s two Euro Final
Defeats in a row
It’s the Holland syndrome
When World Cups were
Snatched away from the Dutch
In 1974 and 1978
But that’s the most
Pathetic comparison
Because England could only
Have fantasised about
Total Football
Last night the tank was empty
England, soulless, desperate
Repetition again
Puffing and panting
After red Spanish shirts
Wandering around in a German wilderness
Barely able to string a sentence together
Passes destined for Munich
Bellingham, beaten into submission,
Declan Rice and Phil Foden
Out on their feet
Exhausted, gaunt and haggard
Lead them to a hotel and beach
But certainly not Majorca
Harry Kane, it’s the end of
His England road
Last night it was his swansong
Maybe one day
We’ll be pleasantly surprised
But oh sorry Sir Geoff
It’ll be 60 years and
Nowhere even remotely close
To bringing it home
But there will always
Be an England

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