Sir, - In deploring the lack of local enthusiasm for Kevin Keegan's England soccer team, recent correspondents have failed to make the fundamental distinction between racism and discrimination.
Of course, we want to see England fail, but not because we're anti-English racists. No, we want England to fail because, in John Toshack's bizarrely apt metaphor, the players do not "make the ball smile". We want them to fail because, as aficionados of the beautiful game, we are obliged to discriminate between the sheer ugliness of the aesthetically-challenged English game and the sublimely-expressive game of opponents such as Portugal, France, and Spain.
We want them to fail because of the sheer arrogance which led the English to believe they could actually win this tournament with a manifestly inferior squad of players. We want them to fail because we're sick of the self-deluding Sky shysters who hype the Premiership to the stars when anyone with half a brain can see that it's little more than a Saga holiday for second-rank Eurostars. And if those are not reasons enough, we want them to fail because we hope that the rabble of low-life degenerates who follow them around the world will finally grow tired of batons, jail and disappointment and leave the decent soccer-loving peoples of Europe alone.
World Cup 2006 in Engulund? Football's coming home? Roosting chickens more like. - Yours, etc.,
Bert Wright, Hillside, Dalkey.