On the subject of the US women’s football team.

They are good. Blooming good. I can’t and won’t deny that. And to agree too strongly with Mr Curtis who wrote earlier today about their arrogance and that they may be respected but they are not loved would smack too much of being a poor loser on my part as an Englishwoman. And if there is one thing that was dinned into my generation it was not to be a poor loser. Especially as the teams I have supported locally all my life have done an awful lot of losing.

My husband, hearing of her SWJ activist credentials described Megan Rapinoe as ‘bit of a female Gary Lineker then’; Gary Lineker was probably the finest player of his day, is now a very highly paid BBC presenter and fancies himself as a social reformer/judge and proclaimer.  He also advertises crisps.

I know she campaigns for lesbian rights. She and other members of the team make no secret of their dislike for President Trump and seem unable to see that the office of POTUS deserves respect, whatever their personal opinion of the holder.  She is an acolyte of Colin Kaepernick and like him refuses to participate in the National anthem in protest at what they see as racial inequality and police brutality. Despite the woke political activity the French press have still criticised the US team for being predominantly white. Left wing newspaper Le Monde wrote here, and Breitbart did an English report of their article here.  

Le Monde, a left-leaning daily and of France’s newspapers of record, published an article by Stéphanie Le Bars lamenting the fact that a soccer team which has “become in the United States the symbol of the defence of sexual minorities and the equality of rights between men and women” is insufficiently diverse.

Despite being right-on, a team made up almost half of lesbians who campaign for sexual equality, who insult their president, insult their national anthem and the customs associated with it in support of racial equality, for the true SJW nothing is ever enough.

Of course racial equality doesn’t extend to teams of mostly the same colour and same language. When Alex Morgan celebrated her goal against England by taking the rise out of the racial stereotype of the English as a tea drinking nation (btw, her little finger was at quite the wrong angle) Mr Curtis had a point when he spoke of a “controversial lack of restraint in celebrations of success”.

In contrast joint top scorer Ellen White of England (6 goals, the same as Rapinoe who won the Golden Boot for top scorer once goal assists and speed were added to her total) makes a goggles gesture when she scores. It’s a family joke between her and her husband, and when she makes it the whole team and the crowd are invited to share in their joy.  

Earlier England had played Cameroon in a very ugly match. We won, and I’m sure that had it fallen to the USA to play them, that the US would also have won. But what would Miss Morgan’s goal celebrations have been then, shall we put a nice slant in it, to tease with a light-hearted national stereotype? My immediate thought (until this tournament) when Cameroon was mentioned was gorillas; the Cross River gorillas and the Western Lowland in particular. Don’t even think about it. Of course she would not. 

The Cameroon team were very lively. They accused FIFA of racism when their goal was disallowed by the Chinese referee using VAR replay technology. After half time they refused to come out of the tunnel and play for several minutes. When they did  play it was in a foul manner, gouging the Englishwomen, stamping on them when down after tackles, shouting abuse,

using the elbows, they even pushed the referee at one point and worst of all (in my opinion) Toni Duggan was spat on by Augustine Ejangue.

How would Miss Rapinoe and her teammates have reacted to being spat on or elbowed by 11 very assertive African women? Maybe the sheer size and strength of the American women would have been enough to deter the Cameroon team? Who knows?  I am proud of the composure shown by the England team that night. As Jerylyn Bridgeford said to Mr Curtis’s original post, there is a little matter of sportsmanship and life lessons which go beyond the football pitch.

There are great sportsmen and women in the world and in history who win, and know, or knew, how to be magnanimous in victory. Many of them have been Americans.