Yeah...I accidentally watched the end of the match. I called round to my Mums and she had it on. I came in just as the Portugeezer scored the winning goal.

As all the England players sat around sobbing all I could think of was "Ahhhh...poor little multimillionaires". You know what, I think that they get paid so much money that they've got nothing to lose if they lose, after all the £100,000 for this weeks work is still gonna roll in from their club and the concept of playing for the honour of the country is diluted to the point where it doesn't really matter in their chavvy little world.

The papers this morning were calling them heros because apparently they battled hard. Frankly that sticks in my throat seeing that the match was played on the same day that the 90th Anniversary of the battle of the Somme was being remembered. 20,000 men laid down their lives for this country in a single day. Footballers? Heros? Nah, not in my estimation.

Who would that be worse for? :lol:

totally agree..especially the last bit!

yea your right,but at least my half french side is the bottom half???????!!!!!!

Totaly agree with the last comment regarding the somme,just try to come to terms with those figures and if you cant you are not thinking hard enough.

hello....perspective....I hope to god I dont have to face anything like my grandad and thank those that did fought hard for us...but this is sport and just coz they dont DIE doenst mean they cant be heros

just because they earn millions dont decry the amount of effort or how it feels to let down millions of people as, unlike many sports, particularly motorsport, they dont do this for themseleves but others

oh, and lets not forget that football is THE world sport and does more to unite peolpe than anything else

stepping down now.....

he didn't get sent off for the push ... he got sent off for blatantly stamping on an opponents nadgers right in front of the referee, NO ONE in the England camp has come out and defended him ...

as for Ronaldo, he did what any player would have done, how many times have Englands players got involved when one of their own has been kicked, elbowed etc ???

England weren't good enough for the 62 minutes it took Rooney to get sent off, after that they played and battld, too little, too late ... thats the way of the World Cup.

Totally agree with that Dibble..................

Our penalty's were ****E

Football players are clearly NOWHERE near heroes... Until he risks his life for somebody's else, Zidane will never be a hero for me. A football magician maybe, but no hero. Please let's keep that word for people who fought for our freedom.

You can appreciate football players work or not but that's another question. And those who think they earn too much money should just tell their mate to stop paying for watching them...

Personnaly I don't care about football (rugby is more my stuff), I'm loving the World Cup only because France is doing well... :)

Perspective is exactly what I was writing about.

As you've said, football is just a sport, a game, it's humanity at play and a mere pastime. However passionately people feel about it, however much hype surrounds it, ultimately football is completely inconsequential in the great scheme of things. The fact that England lost a game of football to Portugal means nothing in terms of history, it is already yesterdays news and will not change the course of mankind one iota.

At the same time, our national culture has been degraded by a dismal tabloid mentality into one where the mass media feeds on itself in a frenzy of vacuous celebrity. The likes of the Beckhams, Jordan, the latest Big Brother contestant and even complete nonentities like Jade Goody get whipped up by the tabloids, daytime magazine TV and publications like Hello magazine into cult figures who are accredited with a status far in excess of their actual contribution to mankind.

The feeding frenzy results in tabloid hacks having to find yet more superlatives to write about people whom they've already built up into little tin gods, and their paucity of imagination leads them to grossly devalue the word 'hero' in applying it to footballers.

Yes, let's get some perspective into this, you don't have to die to be a hero, or be engaged in the futility of war, but in my book a hero is someone who shows extraordinary courage in the face of extreme adversity. Somebody who goes into a burning house to rescue people regardless of the risk to themselves, somebody who dives into a raging torrent to rescue a drowning child, somebody who speaks out for their people against an oppresive regime regardless of the risk of arrest, persecution or assasination. In my opinion, these are hypothetical examples of a fitting use of the word hero - an event where there is a great deal at stake and one that shows breathtaking bravery from the person who performs it.

To apply the term hero to a few guys that ran around for a couple of hours playing a game of football doesn't even compare, the only adversity they face is a spot of humiliation at letting people down. They'll probably ease this sense of humiliation by keeping their heads down for a few weeks on Necker Island. The trouble is that the lazy journalists who can't be bothered to think beyond trite stock phrases in calling them heros do a great disservice by devaluing the truly heroic people in this world - that's the perspective that's needed.

I won't even begin to give my response to the assertion that footballers "don't do for themselves but for other people", which is frankly risible, or that "football does more to unite people than anything else" otherwise comparisons may need to be drawn between drunken football fans throwing chairs at each other and the worldwide public response to the Tsunami.

My definition of hero is :

'Someone that does something that needs to be done regardless of the consequences to themselves'

The England team didn't do what needed to be done......

Demi-frog aswell guys......dads side of the family....also have the dubious accolade of being conceived on a canal bank somewhere in Brittany.....

Often wondered about having 'Fabrique en France' tattoo'd on my butt.....