Great Footballing Moments No 6

FUCK OFF, YOU GERMAN BASTARDS

When one thinks of the intense and bitter rivalry between those two great
footballing nations, England and Germany, one's mind goes back through the
mists of time...to Euro 2000, to Italia '90, to Mexico 1970 and, of course,
to that fateful day at Wembley in 1966 when we thrashed their arses and they
stole the ball. Magnificent clashes all, and never to be forgotten about.
But the rivalry goes back even farther than this. Right back, in fact, to
the dark and dreary days of post-Victorian days of the days of the Great War
days.

The World War Cup of 1914-18 was to be the greatest footballing competition
anywhere, and the Germans, keen to show that they were better than us
because we had invented football some forty years before, wanted to win the
greatest prize of them all - World footballing supremacy. Under the
leadership of their captain, "Kaiser" Wilhelm Beckenbauer, they had already
swept through most of Europe. Starting with a difficult away win against
Yugoslavia in Sarajevo (a game in which Yugoslav skipper Archduke Rio
Ferdinand III was shot through the head in injury time), they had gone on to
overcome Austria, Hungary, the Sudetenland, Italy and France in the group
stages. Their march towards the final was unrelentingless as they displayed
their superior style of football in every department.

England, on the other hand, had had an easy passages through the group
phase - a couple of byes against Sweden and Norway, and an away pact with
the Russians saw to it that they would go through to face Germany in the
final at the Somme Stadium in 1918. Led by their master tactician of a
manager, Sir Alf Kitchener, all they had to so was beat the Krauts, and the
World War Cup was theirs for the taking. It was the Big One, the most
important game in the then youthful history of Association Football.

Corporal Tommy "Tommy" Thompson, now 108 and living in sheltered
accommodation just outside Stafford, an inside left with the Royal Engineers
and winning his third cap in that memorable final, still recalls it vividly.
"It was a hard game. The Germans came out and lined up, ready for kick-off,
and when we saw them they looked so big. So what we did was shoot a couple
of them just to bring them down to size, sort of put them in their place.
Let them know we meant business. But it was a great occasion - the lads
going over the top, someone playing the national anthem on a mouth organ,
people covered in shit and being shot for cowardice when they were only
suffering shell shock. Unforgettable, and one I will never ever forget."

And so, at midnight on Christmas Day of 1917, all the fighting stopped as
the two teams kicked off. The pitch, it has to be said, left a little to be
desired, though it was no worse than Old Trafford about halfway through
November. The Germans took an early lead when a gas bomb went off and killed
several English poets, among them 19-year-old Siegfried Bassoon.
Fortunately, he just about had the time to write about it shortly before he
died. His words are preserved for all eternity at the National Museum Of
Football Poetry in Preston...

How sweetly sings the lark of freedom
How brightly shines the moon
How beautifully comes the twilight
Oh, hang on...a bomb's just gone off

Marvellous stuff.

With the Germans coming forward, England had to defend manfully. Several
defenders had to leave the field with legs missing, some of them screaming
and holding their eyes saying they were blind as well. Like you see in
films. But on the break there came, after half an hour, a scoring
opportunity. Private Geoffrey "Rotten Tooth" Hurst, a centre forward with
the Royal Fusiliers, suddenly found himself in no man's land. He broke free
of his German marker and scored with a perfectly placed lob of hand grenade
into the depths of a German trench. Er...I mean the nets. The Germans
protested that Hurst was offside, but to no avail. The referee, after
consulting his linesman, signalled to say that the hand grenade had indeed
crossed the line, and the score was 1-1.

The Germans regrouped and came back strongly, but England stood firm and
were soon two goals ahead through Private Martin "Insignificant" Peters. It
looked as though England would win, but in the dying seconds of the war, the
bastards equalised again. Wouldn't you know it, the cunts. And so, for the
first and only time in history, a World War went into extra time. But that
extra time belonged, quite rightly, to England. The Krauts, knackered,
fucked and unable to play on because they are Germans and couldn't win a war
if you paid them, gave in as England ran riot. Hurst scored again and then,
in the dying seconds, grabbed a third machine gun trench for his hat-trick.
A fine individual performance that would later see him with some new teeth
and a knighthood from the king.

It was then up to England captain, Bobby "Jewel Thief" Moore, who had
earlier lost a testicle in a bayonet attack, to collect the World War Cup
from Her Majesty King George V. The Germans, being Germans, promised revenge
twenty years later in World War Cup II, but it would be the same old story.
Because they are Germans.

Of course, since then the Germans have gone on to win three World Cups while
we've only won one, and a few European Championships as well. But they'll
never beat us in World Wars.

--
Arthur Thacker 2003

"Arthur Thacker" <[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]> wrote in message news:<bd9jl9$juf$[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]>...

And if people would stop attaching the events of world wars to
football matches, we might have a case for superiority over the
jerrys.

SC
[Only registered and activated users can see links. ]

ps Don't get me wrong though, liked the thread (assuming it's ironic)