In the euphorically barmy delusions of upcoming World Cup invincibility — the English never used to be so insanely carried away when their teams even had a real chance of winning the ruddy thing — I was taken by one nicely observant line on how manager Sven-Goran Eriksson’s qualifying syntax invariably hedges the bets with his almost permanent employment of the same three words in the middle of every sentence: ‘…of course, but…’ As in, ‘We shall win the tournament, of course, but you never know because this is football’; or ‘I am perfectly prepared to drop David Beckham, of course, but he is the captain’. Eriksson’s quite implausible and half-baked gamble in picking teenager Theo Walcott for a World Cup continues to defy belief. ‘I have never seen him play, of course, but his father says he is a very good player for his age.’
In 2003 Eriksson picked Wayne Rooney at 17 years 111 days …of course, but …he was already a fully fledged infant prodigy, having set the Mersey on fire with more than a full season in the Premiership.
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