Deschamps has brashly taken all of his best players and fashioned them into the most lethal attacking unit in world football, sure.
But do they have the squad balance, leadership and cohesion provided by the likes of Dan Burn, Jordan Henderson and Anthony Gordon? I think not.
As their material and social standing decline, the middle class cling onto their melancholy. The worst thing of all would be to slip into the great morass of plebian populism, of a lack of taste, of local pleasures. One cannot believe the proles, because then one's superior sadness would be revealed to mean nothing at all.
To the Barbican tonight for opening of a new show about 1996. It was all Oasis, Blur, Spice Girls and Euro 96. But my single favourite exhibit was an artefact I had never seen before
One thing the situation in Iran has made crystal clear is that whichever country, regime, group or political ideology, no matter how vile, disgusting or repressive, however many people are massacred or exterminated, as long as they are anti-West, specifically anti-US (and by extension anti-Israel), they will have the unquestioning support of the majority of the liberal left and the entertainment world.
The same “progressive left” who happily live in the west, profit from its relative freedoms, yet turn their activism on and off like a switch, or in some cases, even make a living out of it.
It is disappointing and exhausting.
But grateful to all those who have spoken out. Especially in the comedy community. It takes a lot of guts to do so when everyone around you is looking the other way.
@ITVRugby Please for the love of god, don’t base your pundit team on 2003 relics. TNT have a perfectly good approach, steal it, make money. Dont feel you have explain every rule as if we’re five year old football fans!
We are entering a period of reactionary progressivism, in which ostensibly left-wing parts of the intelligentsia attempt to defend and attach themselves to the increasingly discredited corporate and institutional cultural politics of the 2010s. It’s not doing anyone any favours.