There should be a Cup handed out to the team that come up with the best excuse for their limp performance. After all it takes some inventive genius to do this.
For a while it was France after their pathetic performance against Switzerland, Thierry Henry complained that the pitch was too dry. However, the Ukrainian team took the cake griping that their 4-0 pasting at the hands of Spain was due to the group of inconsiderate all night partying frogs outside their hotel and their beer songs that kept them up late the previous night.
Now comes the Swiss with their inability to put even one PK in goal. The reason: German singing. According to Marco Streller, the Swiss striker and one of the three who missed his PK, the Germans in the crowd would start chanting “Lucas Podolski” or “We’re going to the World Cup without Holland”, just before the Swiss took their PKs, causing them to lose concentration.
Streller goes onto say that the Germans were uninterested fans. I think that is an understatement, the world went to sleep with that soporific display of soccer. The Germans did the right thing by keeping awake singing songs. After all you really do not want to go to sleep with 20,000 other people in a field unless you’re the Fisher King.
It has gotten so bad that there is talk of including William Tell in the Swiss squad. Read the Guardian for a good chuckle with your cuppa.