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TPQ
Gary Donnelly  ★ Last night's violence that broke out surrounding the Derry City fixture came as no surprise to many and has, unfortunately, been a recurring feature in the past few years. 


It is becoming a problem which cannot be ignored any longer and serious questions has to be raised about the circumstances around this issue and those which contribute to this increasingly dangerous situation. 

Firstly, and perhaps most glaringly, is the policing operation which was put into action preceding the kick off time. In the city, yesterday, it was widely predicted that there would be trouble. CSKA Sofia supporters in previous days had identified on social media a bar on Bishop Street as a potential target where Derry supporters would gather. Their fans were aggressively roaming the city centre in broad daylight giving Nazi salutes with T-shirts that declared their wish for violence. In light of this, it has to be established who was responsible for marching these people down Bishop Street past the aforementioned bar that was identified by these people as a target. Knowing that doing so violence would be inevitable and tensions would be heightened.

Having talked to some residents in the Bishop Street and Brandywell area it is clear that there was no consultation with residents or anyone who would be obviously affected. The feeling amongst many people in the area is that for the past few years there has been no willingness to deal with these issues by those who hold responsibility for such occasions.
 
When leaving the Ryan McBride Brandywell stadium last night the opposing fans were taken safely through what is known locally “as the line”, The question has to be asked, given the open far right connections to may of these supporters and brewing tensions, why was this route not used to escort these fans to the match?


Going to a Derry match was once a family event that had a special atmosphere. It is rapidly becoming something which is associated with thuggery and violence reminiscent of the vileness of English football hooliganism. Brian Clough once commented during a Forest visit to the Brandywell on the great atmosphere and noted that there was 'not a bobby (police officer) in sight'. A man well travelled to football grounds across Europe. 

In my opinion, Derry City, should be working to return to these days, welcoming family days out instead of the fear, violence and sickening scenes that have happened recently. The recent example of Institute's use of the Ryan McBride Brandywell stadium is a positive model of community engagement and maybe an example which Derry City should examine. 

Having the PSNI in the Brandywell is not the answer to these problems. Furthermore, there is a suspicion amongst people in Derry that such issues are being exploited by those who have a political agenda which results in an open PSNI presence inside the Ryan McBride Brandywell stadium during matches.

⏩Gary Donnelly is an Independent Republican Councillor on Derry & Strabane Council.

Not Well At Brandywell

Geordie Morrow 🖌 with a painting from his collection of art work. 


⏩Geordie Morrow is a Belfast artist.

The Park

Dixie Elliot ✊I am seeing the claim that support for the Argentinian football team is support for Zionism being used a lot in the last week or so.



This is nonsense based on ignorance as a quick Google will tell you otherwise.
 
While the Argentinian president is a pro-Israel piece of shit, the people of Argentina have demonstrated their support for Palestine by holding mass rallies across the country in recent times.
 
As for Messi himself, it is hard to say where he stands and it has been pointed out that he visited the Western Wall in Jerusalem back in 2013. But the fact is that he went as part of the entire Barcelona team, on what was a 'peace tour'.
 
So if he was supporting the Zionists then so was the entire team.
 
Don't forget that the Western Wall is Judaism's holiest site and there are a minority of Jews living in Jerusalem itself who hate the Zionist state called Neturei Karta. They believe Jews are religiously forbidden to establish a sovereign state before the coming of the Messiah.

Messi is Catholic. He marks his goals by looking skyward in tribute to his grandmother, Celia, who accompanied him to training and matches when he was a boy and passed away when he was 11.

He often cites José Pékerman, the Jewish-Argentine coach who gave him his debut on the world stage, as the reason for his respect towards the Jewish people. 

Pékerman managed the Argentina U-20 side and launched Messi's senior international career, calling him up for his first World Cup in 2006.

Regardless, the Argentinian people cannot be accused of being pro-Zionist even if their president is.

Thomas Dixie Elliot is a Derry artist and a former H Block Blanketman.
Follow Dixie Elliot on Twitter @IsMise_Dixie

Argentines Against Colonial Zionism

Aaron Edwards ★ Writing in Aide Memoire.

There have been conflicting reports about the involvement of loyalist paramilitaries in the recent riots in Northern Ireland - but what is the truth of the matter?

Following a knife attack on a man in the Kinnaird Avenue area of north Belfast on 8th June, in which the PSNI charged another man with attempted murder, serious rioting broke out across Northern Ireland.

The Irish News initially reported on Wednesday 10th June that loyalists were involved in the trouble.

A day later the Belfast Telegraph carried a front page headline indicating loyalist paramilitaries denied orchestrating riots but would not help stop the violence.

On 12th June The Guardian suggested loyalists were likely sitting on the fence about the unfolding mayhem and had ostensibly adopted a ‘neutral’ stance.

By the end of the week, on 14th June, the Belfast Telegraph’s Northern Ireland Editor Sam McBride was writing about his first-hand encounter with loyalist paramilitaries while covering the riots.
A few days later on 18th June the Irish News featured an interview with the Commissioner for Children and Young people, Chris Quinn, who said he was aware of young people being bussed in to trouble spots to clear drug debts.

The next day the Irish News editorial went a step further and laid the blame for the riots squarely at the door of loyalists, stating ‘no serious observer could ever in doubt that the recent racist rioting was organised by loyalist paramilitary figures’.

The Writing is on the Wall

With conflicting reports on the involvement of paramilitary groups, where does the truth actually lie?

It is important to be honest at the outset: Loyalist paramilitaries have been deeply involved in rioting and race hate incidents in the past. Therefore, it is reasonable to assume, as the old saying goes, there really is “no smoke without fire”.

In fact as recently as the week before this gruesome knife attack, the Sunday World newspaper carried my comments on racist graffiti that had appeared in and around the Rathcoole estate. It had been reported that local paramilitaries had forced children to spray the writing on the walls.

The graffiti did not appear out of nowhere.

It followed off the back of non-violent protests staged by concerned local residents regarding an incident involving a group of Yemeni migrants dancing on ceremonial daggers in Hazelbank Park, a short distance from the estate.

Hazelbank has become something of a flashpoint in recent years, particularly as new immigrant communities take advantage of the outdoor amenities.

Inevitably these protests have drawn the attention of some paramilitaries, with one tabloid newspaper suggesting the South East Antrim UDA had been involved in an arson attack on a vehicle belonging to a Nigerian man in Rathcoole.

I have since learned that a local UVF figure is suspected of being behind the spray can graffiti and, potentially, in actively sending young people onto the streets.

Not much happens in the working class estates of Newtownabbey without paramilitaries being
aware of the situation. The question is are they directly involved in the violence we saw in early June?

Most readers would probably ask at this point - why does it matter which organisation is involved? Surely the key point is they are involved.

My answer would be that it matters because knowing what kind of malign influence animates such acts, even at a localised level, can aid in preventing or pre-empting them in future.

Influence vs Involvement

How then can we understand the role of paramilitaries in race hate incidents?

I think the first point to make is that we can assume some degree of loyalist paramilitary influence, if not involvement, in the recent riots.

This may seem to fly in the face of the PSNI’s briefing on 11th June that there was ‘no evidence’ of ‘paramilitary coordination’ in the violence.

Whether individual paramilitaries were physically present on the ground directing trouble or simply ‘monitoring’ the situation from a step removed is a moot point, for they are part of the fabric of marginalised and deprived communities.

They know everything that goes on and they have real influence in deciding the direction of travel when feet are on the street in large numbers.

At this point it is important to step back for a moment and look at the wider dynamic at play within paramilitary groups.

Both the UVF and UDA leadership structures have become ossified in recent years as they have made moves to leave the stage.

In practice, what that means in places like Rathcoole is that mid-level ‘commanders’ have much more autonomy to respond to issues like racial tensions. It also means if an intolerant figure is in charge of the UVF locally - and there have been many shifts in leadership over the past few years - then they may well be complicit. And the Shankill-based Brigade Staff would be none the wiser.

However, that is not the same as saying there is a single mastermind sitting behind the scenes pulling the strings of those predominantly younger people engaged in the trouble.

Whether paramilitaries were involved is a moot point for it is generally agreed the causes and course of the
riots in Belfast and elsewhere is not indicative of one overarching ‘puppet master’ pulling the strings.

As tempting though it may be to assert that paramilitary involvement explains the causes of the violence, it is important to place these riots in a wider perspective. One in which direct involvement is distinguished from active influence and/or passive influence in a broader strategic context.

Let me explain what I mean in a little more detail.

When asked for comment by the Irish News on 10th June, I mapped out a number of theories regarding paramilitary involvement and/or influence in this fast developing situation:

One theory is that, given several loyalist paramilitary leaderships have been in negotiations regarding paramilitary disbandment, it’s unlikely loyalist groups sanctioned the horrific scenes we witnessed on the streets last night.
It might be argued the tight leash governments and international donors have exerted on paramilitary groups makes it unlikely their membership were directed to become involved.
Another theory - a rather cynical one - is that paramilitary structures have not gone away because they have no intent to do so. By stepping back some of these groups are essentially saying to the authorities: “we can be useful in managing racial conflict.” By doing nothing they are trying to make themselves relevant. And that’s morally repugnant and dangerous.
It means, as the past two years of race based rioting has proven, some people in positions of authority actually buy into this vision of what some experts like Dr Sean Brennan have called ‘paramilitary peacekeeping’.

There was, of course, a third theory (mentioned above), in terms of the internal dynamics between central command structures and local leadership.

Nevertheless, you will hopefully see the point I am trying to make.

In all three scenarios, paramilitaries - and how the state, society and people all interact with them - can switch between passive influence, active influence and direct involvement, particularly when it comes to violence.

Curiously, as the trouble spread, there were even calls for paramilitaries to shift into direct involvement mode to ‘put the genie’ of race-based violence back in its bottle.

This is a tempting lever to reach for, as I have argued on many occasions before. There is even evidence to suggest it was used effectively when loyalist youths clashed with the PSNI in 2021.

In the context of the recent riots, I argued it might well stop one form of (race-based) violence but we risk embedding these groups further into a well-trodden pattern of (sectarian) violence.

What I should add is this approach continues to be favoured within policy and statutory communities.

Shifting Ground

Whether loyalist paramilitaries played a coordinated role or not, the ground beneath them is shifting.

More and more young people have proven themselves determined and coordinated when it comes to putting feet on the street, with or without paramilitary influence or direct involvement.

For close analysts of the security situation, these changes are not unexpected.

Indeed, it could be argued the past three summers of racially motivated rioting, signals two possible futures.

On the one hand, paramilitary groups will act to capitalise on the disaffection and go on a recruitment drive, particularly amongst those young people impacted by the criminal justice system.

On the other hand, new (malign) social movements may well emerge from the violence we witnessed earlier this month.

While some see paramilitaries as benevolent arbiters of social good - in old fashioned terms as ‘defenders’, others will see them as malevolent forces injurious to the greater good.

No matter what way you characterise them, they show no signs of going away anytime soon.

Rioting, whatever its cause, only makes them more relevant and places an onus on those charged with eradicating them from our midst to understand the changing character of the risks they pose to community safety.

Aaron Edwards is the author of critically acclaimed books, UVF: Behind the Mask and Agents of Influence: Britain’s Secret Intelligence War Against the IRA. His next book, Enemies Within, on the use of secret agents inside the UDA/UFF, will be published by Merrion Press in 2026.

No Smoke Without Fire?

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand And Thirty Six

 

A Morning Thought @ 3209

Frankie McKillen ✍ On 5 June 1956, Elvis Presley appeared on The Milton Berle Show and performed Hound Dog. 

By the following morning, respectable society had lost its mind. Critics condemned him. Religious leaders attacked him. Newspapers warned of moral decline, calling Presley's performance “animalism.” 

 Looking back from the twenty-first century, it seems absurd. A young man sang a song and moved his hips. Civilisation survived. Yet the reaction tells us something important — because long before Punk shocked Britain and long before Heavy Metal terrified parents, another youth culture had already been accused of corrupting society. They called it Rockabilly. 

Music historians love putting things in neat little boxes. Rockabilly. Rock ’n’ Roll. Country. Punk. Heavy Metal. Each gets its own chapter, its own heroes, its own declared beginning and end. Life is rarely that tidy. The more music you listen to, the less convincing those boxes become. Because the more you look, the more you see the same tribe appearing again and again across the decades. 

Today Rockabilly is often remembered through a warm haze of nostalgia — classic cars, bowling shirts, weekend festivals, a harmless celebration of a simpler time. That is not how society saw Rockabillies when they actually existed. The Rockabilly was the outsider. The delinquent. The rebel. The kid your parents hoped you wouldn’t become. Teachers complained. Churches condemned. Newspapers fretted. Sound familiar? It should. The same things would later be said about punks. And later still about metalheads.Every generation seems compelled to invent a tribe that respectable society cannot understand — while that tribe, more often than not, understands itself perfectly well. In 1956 Elvis was accused of corrupting youth. Twenty years later the Sex Pistols were accused of doing exactly the same thing . The soundtrack changed. The panic barely did. 

But perhaps we need to go back even further. Before Elvis. Before Rockabilly. Before youth culture became an industry. There was Hank Williams . Today Hank is treated almost as a national monument — country music royalty, a legend beyond reproach. But monuments have a habit of making us forget that the people they commemorate were once troublemakers. Hank drank hard and lived harder. He ignored convention and filled his songs with loneliness, guilt, heartbreak and flawed humanity. Long before rebellion became a marketing strategy, Hank embodied it simply by being himself. The rebel existed before the uniform. The attitude came before the categories. And when Rockabilly emerged, Hank’s fingerprints were everywhere. Then came Elvis. Not the Vegas Elvis. Not the Hollywood Elvis. The Sun Records Elvis — the dangerous one, the Elvis who genuinely frightened adults. Listen to Baby Let’s Play House. Listen to Mystery Train. 

Even today those early recordings sound restless and unpredictable, like something that might escape at any moment. Elvis represented something bigger than music. He represented youth culture breaking free from adult control, and that has always frightened people in ways that are difficult to fully articulate. 

If Elvis opened the door, Gene Vincent walked through it wearing trouble like a badge. There is real danger in his records — not theatrical danger, not the performed menace of later rock showmanship, but something rawer. The sense that something unexpected might happen at any moment. Gene Vincent didn’t look like the clean-cut entertainers television executives preferred. He looked like trouble. And in youth culture, attitude is often as powerful as music. Eddie Cochran understood this too. Songs like Somethin’ Else and C’mon Everybody were not merely pop songs — they were declarations of independence. The adults had their world. Young people wanted one of their own. Punk would later build an entire philosophy around that same idea. Eddie Cochran was already singing it in the 1950s. Carl Perkins deserves his place in this story too. Listen to Cat Clothes — swagger drips from every note. Then listen to Dixie Fried and the atmosphere shifts completely. A flick knife appears. The police arrive. Somebody gets arrested. This is not the sanitised 1950s of nostalgia documentaries. This is music populated by outsiders and hard cases, by people who existed on the edges of respectability. The swagger and the menace — both attitudes would later find homes in Punk and Heavy Metal alike. 

If any single record connects all of this, it is Rumble. No lyrics. No politics. No manifesto. Just menace — an instrumental that was banned despite having no words whatsoever. Think about that. A record with no lyrics frightened people. Not because of what it said, but because of what it felt like. The distortion was the message. The mood was the message. The threat was the message. The blueprint for everything that followed already existed, pressed into vinyl in 1958. 

Now before somebody writes an angry letter, yes, the roots of distortion run deeper. Blues musicians were experimenting with distorted sounds long before metal existed. The blues is the foundation stone upon which much of modern popular music was built. But Link Wray took distortion and made it a weapon. He transformed noise into attitude. I am not arguing that every punk band or metal band emerged directly from Rockabilly. I am saying that they inherited something more important: the outsider instinct. The connections are not something later writers invented. The musicians themselves recognised them. The Sex Pistols recorded Eddie Cochran songs. The punks understood the bloodline. The Clash recorded Vince Taylor’s Brand New Cadillac — a direct line back to the Rockabilly spirit. And one of Punk’s defining records, I Fought The Law, originated with Sonny Curtis and The Crickets before becoming a hit for The Bobby Fuller Four. When The Clash played it, they weren’t rejecting the past. They were raiding it. The conflict with authority, the outsider, the anti-hero — those themes were already there. Punk inherited them and turned up the volume. 

The evidence keeps accumulating. Tiny Bradshaw records The Train Kept A-Rollin’. The Johnny Burnette Trio transforms it into Rockabilly dynamite. Decades later the UK Subs covered it. A single song travelling through generations of outsiders, each finding something of themselves inside it. 

Something else worth noting: the walls between these genres were always more porous than critics want to admit. Musicians understand this instinctively, even when historians don't. Consider Glen Campbell, remembered by most people as a mainstream country singer. Musicians remember one of the greatest guitar players of his generation. According to Alice Cooper, Eddie Van Halen — one of the greatest rock guitarists who ever lived — once asked to arrange a lesson with Campbell . The walls separating genres exist primarily in the minds of critics and marketing departments. Talented musicians have always walked straight through them. Johnny Cash’s recording of Hurt makes the same point from a different angle. On paper it should never have worked — a country legend recording a Nine Inch Nails song. It became one of the most powerful recordings of Cash’s entire career, because great songs are bigger than the categories we file them under. The emotions are universal. The labels are temporary. 

Long before “outlaw country” became a marketing label, Waylon Jennings was fighting Nashville in much the same way Punk would later fight the music industry. His tribute to Bob Wills was more than a country song. It was a declaration that authenticity mattered more than fashion. The same instinct that drove Punk musicians to rediscover Eddie Cochran drove Waylon to defend Bob Wills. Different music. Same refusal to be told what mattered. 

If this article has a hidden patron saint, it may well be Bob Wills. Long before music historians began constructing neat categories, Bob Wills was happily ignoring them. Country, Blues, Jazz, Swing and Dance Music all flowed together in his world. He borrowed what worked and ignored what didn’t. The idea that musical genres should exist in separate compartments would have seemed absurd to him. Wills understood something that musicians have always understood: good music travels. In many ways he embodied the same spirit that runs through this ramblin'. He refused to stay in his lane because he never accepted that lanes existed in the first place. Long before Punk challenged convention and long before Rockabilly fused Country and Rhythm & Blues, Bob Wills was already proving that musical boundaries were far more porous than critics like to admit. Heavy Metal fans sometimes speak of Lemmy as though he emerged fully formed from some leather-clad underworld. 

The reality is more interesting. Lemmy openly described himself as a Rockabilly at heart . He loved Gene Vincent. He loved Eddie Cochran. Long before Motörhead there was a kid in front of a record player, listening to Rock ’n’ Roll. The chain had never been broken — he had simply carried it forward. The story is about the outsider tradition that runs through all of them — a continuous thread connecting Hank Williams fighting respectability, Elvis frightening America, Gene Vincent looking dangerous, Eddie Cochran demanding independence, Carl Perkins supplying swagger and menace in equal measure, Link Wray inventing sonic threat, Johnny Cash refusing categories, the Pistols raiding Rock ’n’ Roll, the Clash digging through history, Lemmy carrying the torch. The ducktail became the Mohican. The Mohican became the devil horns. The drape jacket became the leather jacket. They called them delinquents. They called them Rockabillies. They called them a threat to decent society. Twenty years later they called them punks. Twenty years after that, metalheads. 

The haircut changed. The attitude didn’t.

🕮 Frankie McKillen is a Belfast Rockabilly

The Soundtrack Changed 🥁 The Panic Barely Did

Common Dreams ★ Written by Jake Johnson.

“Is the secretary of state worried because he knows US personnel committed war crimes in Iran?”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday announced what he characterized as a “campaign to dismantle” the International Criminal Court, the Hague-based tribunal tasked with investigating and charging individuals with war crimes and other violations.

In a video posted to social media, Rubio accused the international court of “waging a war against our country—not with bullets or missiles, but with statutes, compacts, and the force of so-called international law.” The top American diplomat threatened that the US “will teach the ICC the full meaning of American resolve.”

The US State Department said in a statement that Rubio’s new campaign against the ICC would “feature a whole-of-government response to systematically disable” the court’s “ability to operate, target American servicemen or officials, or otherwise threaten American sovereignty.” The US is not party to the Rome Statute, the 1998 treaty that established the ICC.

US President Donald Trump and his subordinates, who have been accused of myriad violations of international law, have adopted an increasingly aggressive posture toward the ICC since taking power last January.

Continue @ Common Dreams.

Rubio Threatens To ‘Teach the ICC’ — Which Prosecutes War Crimes — The ‘Full Meaning Of American Resolve’

Christopher Owens 🔖 reviews a work by a Belfast author.

. . . I’ve talked to kids, they’ve written me, and they go, “Well, I’m frustrated. We’ve had this band for a year and nothing’s happening.” And I’m like, “Man.” See, that’s a mistake a lot of kids make. They have ambitions for something to happen to their music, and fuck, just do it because you like to do it, you know. That’s what we did it because it was fun. We couldn’t believe that we could actually, you know...I don’t know what context that was taken in, but...if you sincerely believe that it’s like something that satisfies your soul, which I did, then that’ll happen to you. If you’re just doing it with some kind of like false ambition...thinking somebody’s gonna discover you...then it probably won’t happen. But if you do it just because you wanna do it, then good things will come to you.

Something of a cliche but Guided by Voices frontman Robert Pollard tells the truth.

This quote makes me think of Belfast based author Jonathan Traynor. Four books in two years (with another due soon), he writes out of a love and passion for story telling as opposed to social media clout and having bookTokers recommend his work without ever reading it,

For his second book of 2026, Traynor offers up Fist Can Be a Verb. A collection of short stories, poems and essays, it has a similar function to Stephen King’s Night Shift in that it has connections to his other works (two stories were originally part of Race the Undead) but also showcases where he’s going next as a writer.

I’m written before about how a good short story collection should be something that can be dipped into at leisure and enjoyed in isolation. It really is an art form in itself, a highly underrated one.

So how does Fist Can Be a Verb match up?

Opener “Hero dwarf Stephen” surveys the aftermath of an epic battle between two giant dragons and an army of elves. While the former have been killed by the titular hero he has been mortally wounded in the process. Although only a page and a half long, it manages to depict a devastated world as well as be both oddly moving and amusing at the same time (the name reminds me of Tim the Enchanter from Monty Python).

“When a blow job is not just a blow job” has a porn obsessed, self-righteous arsehole bore the reader about the power dynamics involved in oral sex, all the while thinking that he’s being matter of fact, even giving us the title of this collection. Coming off (ooh er) as a left-wing version of the Viz character The Male Online (ironic considering the narrator attacks the Daily Mail), Traynor writes him as somewhere in between a lecturer and a pornographer. Maybe one that could have been expanded by a few pages.

In a change of format ‘Blind, stupid and unable to face facts’ is a polemic about the average person getting shafted by the state who are utterly unprepared for the time bomb that awaits us:

. . . the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency recently... said that there will be more people over 65 than children by 2027. ‘There are projected to be more deaths than births in 2030 with that trend then continuing indefinitely,’ said the BBC report on April 28th, 2026, regarding the release of this latest data set. The trend is not new. The politicians, officials et al know this but deliberately look away. Yes, it is a deliberate decision to look the other way. To not consider consequences.

It’s heartfelt, well-argued and just a little bit angry!

The rest of the book continues in the same format established by the opening three tales/polemics and demonstrate how effective Traynor is as a writer where he can have you laughing one minute, filled with melancholia the next and then pondering implications for society afterwards

While not the best book he’s put out this year (that goes to Earl Black) it’s certainly a notable diversion to take the readers on. And, as Neil Young once noted, that’s where you meet the most interesting people.

Jonathan Traynor, 2026, Fist Can be a Verb. Independently Published.

⏩ Christopher Owens was a reviewer for Metal Ireland and finds time to study the history and inherent contradictions of Ireland. He is currently the TPQ Friday columnist and is the author of A Vortex of Securocrats and “dethrone god”.

Fist Can Be A Verb

Lynx By Ten To The Power Of Two Thousand And Thirty Five

 

Religious Derangement Syndrome @ 7

 

A Morning Thought @ 3208

Anthony McIntyre ⚽ Over the past eight years the English national soccer team has established a consistently impressive albeit not successful record. 


World Cup semifinalists twice, quarterfinalists once, Euros finalists twice. While it has brought no silverware it would be parsimonious to deny the team some kudos.

Dull but worthy is perhaps the best way to describe the England sides of the past decade. A motley collection of epigones who seek to emulate, but never quite manage, the great squads whose names have been inscribed on the most coveted trophy in world soccer.

In a nutshell, England simply are not good enough. Rather than bemoan their exit and scream for the head of Tuchel, their fans should give the coach credit for having guided them to the last four in the tournament alongside illustrious names like France, Argentina and Spain. Those three have panache whereas England are pedestrian. The generosity needed to pardon Tuchel for a crime he did not commit is unlikely to come easy to boiled bloods when five minutes is what stood between them and a Sunday clash with Spain.

Before the kickoff, I felt England had a chance of making it through to the final, thinking that Argentina might have shot their bolt in the victory over Egypt. I had no dog in the fight despite having plumped for Argentina in most World Cup tournaments since 1978, always feeling disappointed when they go out. If the soccer is good, I'll be more than happy no matter who wins. My son was much more partisan and passionate, rooting for the South Americans while hurling abuse at the England players. His uninhibited delight at both Argentinian goals was even more unbridled than my own celebratory outpourings over my sixty plus years of watching the game. When I asked him why such hostility to the English team when he was a serious Liverpool fan, his answer: Liverpool are not English, they are Scouse.

I'm not complaining about him. I recall only too well my delight when Poland stopped England even making the 1974 competition in West Germany, when Argentina knocked them out in Mexico 1986, when Germany blocked their progress in 2010, when Iceland humiliated them in the Euros in 2016. On each occasion I was like a dog with two tails, not knowing which to wag.

The game last night started out as no soccer spectacle. The Argentinians behaved a bit like Paraguay in their game against France, fouling and spoiling. Once they felt they had the measure of their English opponents they began to hunt the ball rather than the man. And when they went a goal behind that was the touchpaper that set them alight.

That moment has led to Thomas Tuchel coming in for a lot of flak for his decision to go Southgate once Anthony Gordon put the English in front. He hoped to see the remaining 35 minutes of the game out with a preponderance of defenders, seven at one point. His detractors including Mark Goldbrige thought it insanity and have demanded that 'the fraud' be sacked.

My own take was that Tuchel had little choice. The match stats indicate that even before the Gordon goal England was not a serious attacking force.


Kane and Bellingham posed no threat and with Declan Rice reduced to sluggishness the main goalscorers for England throughout this tournament never looked like getting the type of service they could convert into goals. Tuchel observing this seemed to have calculated that England's strongest card lay in defending, that the English defence was equal to the Argentinian attack. His option was to press forward and risk getting hit on the counter by an explosive attacking phalanx. Blow for blow there was no way England could have outscored Argentina. As physicists like to say the maths speak for themselves. It was a gamble but Tuchel could only play with the hand he had to get the optimal result from the equation on the board. His misfortune may have lain in the timing of the Gordon goal. Had it arrived twenty minutes later his defence strategy might have come off.

While it no longer bothers me if England do well - I have developed a similar attitude to Manchester United - I still find the sweet taste of Schadenfreude irresistible. The memes, the banter, watching former blanketmen delirious with delight at England's misfortune. 


I share the view of my friend Caoimhin O’Muraile, who when I was with him in Dublin this afternoon, told me in his working class English accent that while he was pleased England lost he bears no ill will towards the players. Like myself he is an avid supporter of an English soccer club. He does think, however, the English national team should be treated like Israel for the crimes the British government has perpetrated in Ireland. My attitude does not extend as far as wanting the side barred from competitions. Argentina, with its current far right president and history of military repression, could as easily provide grounds for wanting it shunned. What grates most with me is the it's coming home attitude of many fans and pundits, that sense of entitlement which allows the World Cup to be looked upon as some treasure that the imperial centre has a right to plunder and place in the metropolis.

England is a good footballing side. The record in recent years speaks for itself. But they are not an elite side. And only the elite can lay claim to the most coveted trophy in the sport.

⏩Follow on Bluesky.

Not Simply The Best

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