England Beat San Marino: As Tedious As it Was Inevitable

Tedious: That’s the only word to describe last week’s England v San Marino World Cup qualifier played behind closed doors at Wembley Stadium. Considering that I have watched very little football on TV in recent months, you may wonder why I bothered with this game. I’m actually wondering that myself.

I put it on because there was nothing else worth watching on live TV, and I wasn’t inspired enough to troll through the catch-up services for anything else. And there was a sort of morbid fascination in watching a mismatch between the team ranked fourth in FIFA’s men’s football rankings, and the team ranked bottom (210^th).

The game followed the usual pattern when England play one of Europe’s lesser lights at Wembley. These games normally comprise twenty minutes of missed England chances, two or three quick goals and a comfortable half-time lead. Rinse and repeat after the break. The second forty-five minutes of these games usually see the England boss introduce a few new faces (one match wonders and ‘pity’ caps along with a genuine prospect or two), breaking up any rhythm and flow that the team had.

England celebrates debut-making Ollie Watkins's first goal for his country.

As games go, this was as predictably one-sided as one would expect; England had 85% of the possession and 32 shots at goal compared with San Marino’s two, neither of which were on target. The fact that England only won 5-0 was thanks to a combination of poor finishing, good goalkeeping, San Marino’s objective of simply keeping the score respectable, and England seemingly just wanting to see how many passes they could string together.

As the match stats show, this was a procession, not a contest.

England’s record against San Marino is seven wins from seven fixtures with 42 goals scored and just one conceded. San Marino’s record in full international’s is Played 175, Won 1, Drawn 7, Lost 167, Goals Scored 24, Goals Against 735. Of Europe’s lowest-ranked sides (San Marino, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Andorra), only Luxembourg (shock winners over the Republic of Ireland on Saturday) has a record that can be described as better than abysmal, and between them, those four nations have lost 929 of the 1,154 internationals they have played.

Some people think that the lowest-ranked nations should play among themselves and qualify for the right to play in the qualification competition proper. Gary Lineker is one such, but his tweet prompted some somewhat self-righteous responses, with his suggestion called “condescending and sneering” in one reply.

A pre-qualifying tournament involving San Marino and Europe's other also-rans might at least give these teams the opportunity to record a few wins and score a few goals because unless I am mistaken, the objective in a football match is to score goals and none of these sides are doing that particularly well. Countries like San Marino (average, one goal every seven games) do not set out to score goals, but simply to concede as few as possible. If they and England were boxers the referee would stop the fight. Actually, they would never be allowed in the same ring in the first place.

You could argue that San Marino are as worthy of their place in the World Cup qualifiers as are the non-League sides that reach the First Round of the FA Cup, except a non-League team that reaches that stage earned that right; the First Round is appropriately called the First Round Proper, because it follows the Qualifying Rounds. FIFA pit countries like Andorra against Germany or Spain as apparent equals and the sole reason that they do so is financial, to create an ever-larger pool of games for which they can sell the television rights. If the broadcasters ever decided that televising these qualifying matches was no longer financially viable, San Marino and Luxembourg would find themselves consigned to a pre-qualifying competition.

Since Uefa created the Nations League, there is no room in the football calendar for a pre-qualifying tournament for lower-ranked sides, and there is no possibility of Uefa abandoning the Nations League. Nor will FIFA sanction a pre-qualifying tournament for the World Cup, or the European Championships, because the Nations League features both the top sides and the weaker nations and generates income from broadcasters. A tournament in which the side ranked highest in FIFA’s rankings might be Luxembourg (98^th) would not provoke a stampede of sponsors, broadcasters, or advertisers to FIFA, or Uefa’s door. If it isn’t generating income, neither FIFA nor Uefa seem interested.

You may – like critics of Gary Lineker’s suggestion – find the idea of a pre-qualifying tournament for football’s lesser lights patronising, or disrespectful. There is a point of view that the smaller nations should have the same opportunities to qualify as the stronger ones, except they never do qualify for the finals, and they never will.

The odds are stacked against San Marino et al even before they kick a ball, because with the draw being seeded, they will rarely be in a group that contains a team they can beat. Neither FIFA nor Uefa will ever do away with seedings – can you imagine the anguish if a group consisting of say, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Portugal, and England was ever drawn out, thus guaranteeing that three or four of those countries would be absent at the tournament finals? There will never be a group consisting of more than one or two of Europe’s weaker nations, hence at the end of this qualifying tournament, San Marino, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Andorra will, as usual, have racked up no more than the two wins they got between them at the 2018 qualification stage.

Another view is that they should have the chance to improve by playing the stronger nations, except getting soundly thrashed and not scoring any goals is not a route to self-improvement. The opportunity to play teams of a similar standard on a more regular basis, to score more goals and actually win some games, would be more encouraging to the Sammarinese than playing Germany and getting beaten 13-0 as they were in 2006. In all, the Sammarinese have played Germany four times; the aggregate score is 34-0; what, precisely does anyone learn from that; how do those scorelines improve Sammarinese football? 

Other sports, and even other football competitions, recognise the disparity between teams of differing strengths and don’t expect them to compete as equals (if they did, we might witness Manchester City entertaining Skelmersdale United in the Extra-Preliminary Round of the FA Cup on the first Saturday in August). But once we get to international football, it seems perfectly acceptable to tolerate such mismatches as the 2001 World Cup qualifier in which Australia beat American Samoa 31-0. Other than a novelty, that sort of game benefits no one.

Football authorities, especially in England, frequently make decisions or implement policies in the name of the integrity of the game, or of a competition; it doesn’t strike me that there’s much integrity in watching a country play 175 matches and lose 167 of them.

Everyone who has been ranting about Gary Lineker's comments, or takes issue with what I've written here can rest easy, however: Nothing will ever change, especially since San Marino et al are probably happy to have the chance to play the top nations regularly, even if they are trounced each time (and be better off financially by doing so), than they would be playing in a group where they could actually win a game or two.

 

 

 

What If They Held A Protest and Nobody Came?

No world event has affected me to the same extent that coronavirus has. The same goes for the vast majority of people on the planet. Even hugely significant events like 9/11, the 2004 Indonesian tsunami, or Chernobyl directly affected relatively few people, albeit that they affected them more profoundly than most of us can ever imagine.

Even Brexit, possibly the most significant political and economic event of our lifetime, will not directly affect most people in the UK on a day-to-day basis. Cheese exporters, fishermen, and many businesses in Northern Ireland will live with the consequences every day, however, and there will be people whose lives will be fundamentally changed by Brexit, some maybe for the better, some maybe for the worse.

The rest of us may notice subtle differences if or when we next travel abroad and there may be other relatively inconsequential changes, but the opinion that you or I hold about how beneficial or detrimental Brexit has been and will continue to be to the nation as a whole will be shaped not by direct experience, but from what we see in the media, from our own research, and yes, from our prejudices.

Similarly, The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, which passed in the Commons by 359 votes to 263 on Monday 16^th March, is very unlikely to impinge on my life, your life, or indeed the lives of an overwhelming majority of the country, yet it has provoked more debate and controversy than many other bills proposed in recent years.

Critics of the bill have been asked how they can oppose a bill that proposes longer sentences for violent offenders? That question misses the point on two fronts. It is entirely possible to support some provisions of the bill - such as stiffer sentences – without supporting all of it (and of course it is one other, very particular aspect of the bill that is the major focus for opposition), and even then, longer sentences are of themselves of limited value given the other very significant failings within the criminal justice system.

There are now more than 56,000 cases awaiting trial in Crown Courts, and while coronavirus is responsible for some of the backlog, the majority of the delays and backlogs have been caused by historic underfunding and cut-backs. In March 2020 - so before coronavirus had an impact -  there were over 40,000 outstanding cases. Some of those cases relate to offences committed in 2018 or earlier, and some of these are unlikely to come to trial before 2022. Justice delayed is justice denied, as the saying goes, and many of these cases will eventually be dropped for a whole host of reasons. There is little benefit in increased sentences if there is little chance of a trial even taking place, let alone there being a conviction.

Banging on about longer sentences, putting the fear of God into criminals, and being tough on crime is a common political rallying cry, and there’s little doubt that it is popular with a significant section of the electorate, particularly those whose hackles are raised by stories in the Daily Mail and other tabloids about legal aid, lenient sentencing, and ‘liberal-elite’ judges. If you are open to an alternative view, may I recommend following The Secret Barrister on Twitter, or reading one or both of their books.[1]

Setting longer sentences aside, the most significant clauses of The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill relate to causing a public nuisance, particularly as it affects the rights of ordinary members of the public to take part in demonstrations and protests.

As someone who has never taken part in a protest march or demonstration (and I think it very unlikely that I will ever be sufficiently provoked or exercised to consider doing so in the future), the chances of this impacting me are slim to non-existent. The same probably goes for 99% of the UK’s population. 

No doubt you will remember the protests by Extinction Rebellion in London in September 2020, and the Black Lives Matters (BLM) demonstrations in June 2020. Those who righteously condemned the vandalism of statues - the daubing of graffiti on the statue of Sir Winston Churchill, and the dumping of Edward Colston’s statue into Bristol Harbour, for instance - will undoubtedly support the proposed stiffer sentences for such vandalism and the proposed restrictions that may be placed on demonstrations and protests in the future.

You may disagree with Extinction Rebellion’s cause, you may disagree with the BLM movement, or you may agree with their motives, but not their methods. In either case, you will probably support The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. Equally, as draconian as the bill’s provisions appear – it would be an offence to cause someone ‘serious annoyance,’ or merely put them at risk of being caused serious annoyance - you may suspect that in practice, little will change, and that very few demonstrations or protests will be affected. On that score, only time will tell.

‘Risk of serious annoyance’ is a pretty low bar however, and as Theresa May said during the debate on the bill, “It’s tempting to think that giving powers to the Home Secretary is very reasonable because we all think we’re reasonable. But actually, future Home Secretaries may not be so reasonable.”

A reasonable Home Secretary?

Many people feel that it would be entirely reasonable that protests and demonstrations like those of Extinction Rebellion and BLM last year are banned, and there’s little doubt that both caused inconvenience and annoyance to some people, but that is actually the way in which protests usually work. As others have pointed out, the current Home Secretary, Priti Patel, and former Home Secretary and Prime Minister Theresa May might not have been able to vote, let alone stand for Parliament and sit as MPs had these restrictions been in place during the early 20^th century when the suffragettes successfully earned votes for women, since there is little doubt that their methods caused some annoyance.

Last year's Extinction Rebellion protest on Westminster Bridge...

...next year's protest.

Anyone who thinks that it is reasonable to ban protests on the grounds that just one person suffers serious annoyance, or is put at risk of suffering serious annoyance, should remember that this will not be limited to protests that they don’t support. Imagine, as implausible as it may seem right now,  if a future government announced plans to rejoin the EU, or to build a nuclear power plant at the end of your garden, or introduce swingeing taxes on private pensions, or privatise the National Health Service. Now imagine that no one could protest about it; what if they gave a protest and nobody came?

It isn’t too much of a stretch for a future Home Secretary to use risk of serious annoyance to even impose a ban on a rally by an opposition political party, fringe or mainstream. But that couldn’t happen here, could it?

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[1] The Secret Barrister: Stories of the Law and How It's Broken, and Fake Law: The Truth About Justice in an Age of Lies

From QWERTYUIOP to NFT

This week I read that 2021 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the first email being sent. It is incredible that that was just two years after Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon, because while the Apollo 11 moon landing now feels like ancient history, the email seems a much more recent innovation.

Ray Tomlinson (pictured below), sent the first email, and the content was apparently something like “QWERTYUIOP,” which, for banality, even beats the first words spoken over the telephone. In 1876, in his first phone call, Alexander Graham Bell addressed his assistant, Mr Watson, thus: “Mr Watson--come here--I want to see you." As an aside, Bell’s preferred usage when answering a phone call was “Ahoy,” which is much better than “Hello” in my view, and a greeting that should be instated as mandatory when answering calls.

It was not until more than twenty years after Ray Tomlinson sent the first one that I became aware of the existence of email. In the early to mid-1990s, home computers were not commonplace, those who did own one probably didn’t have access to the internet, and even at work we relied on more mundane methods of communication than email.

At that time, written communication within the bank that I worked for (HSBC) was by internal memo or fax. With external customers, it was mostly letters, with some faxes, and for banks abroad, SWIFT or telex messages. I first encountered email in 1997 when I was seconded to an IT department, where my manager had an email account. I was delegated by him to send the occasional email on his behalf and although I don’t now remember what system was used, it certainly did not feature the GUI we take for granted today. Instead, it looked something very much like this (except the text was green).

Within the bank, email accounts were like gold dust, and not to be doled out willy-nilly. It was some time before I was deemed worthy of having one, and the email client used by then was Lotus Notes, with its nice, user-friendly interface. I was privileged to be granted an email account that allowed me external access as we dealt with an external software provider, but many staff had to be content with internal email only.

Today, Gmail is the most popular email provider with 1.5 billion active users worldwide, but my first personal email account was with Force9, our first internet service provider (ISP). That first email account ran through Windows Mail on the desktop. Not being a webmail product, it was limited to the one machine we owned, but that didn’t matter as accessing emails on other, more portable devices like phones and tablets was years in the future.

My first email address was, due to a misunderstanding on my part when I created it, a bit of a mouthful; reading it out to people (over the phone for example) was always something of a trial and necessarily accompanied by an explanation of how it was constructed. I’ve since migrated from Force9 to Gmail with a more practical address, but my old account remains active for legacy reasons. Thanks to Force9 having apparently done nothing to improve their email offering in the last thirty years, it is painfully slow, and the only effective way I can still access my inbox is by having Gmail automatically fetch messages.

Our email addresses are now about so much more than just sending and receiving messages; we use them as our logon names for many applications, hence the need for a unique and strong email password to mitigate the risk of credential stuffing attacks. Our emails and their addresses enable us to access tickets for transport, shows, and sporting events for instance, which is why email is one of the most important pieces of technology we have, including on our mobile phones. In fact, the least important piece of functionality on our mobile phones these days is the ability to make and receive telephone calls; perhaps the day will come when we buy phones without a voice call function, or at least with the ability to disable it.

Smartphone functionality – and in particular the range of apps that they can offer – means that apart from rarely leaving the house without mine, I actually need to carry much less when I go out that I did perhaps even a year ago. For instance, I take my wallet out with me but rarely remove a card or cash from it; I use my phone instead, particularly now that the Tesco Pay+ app allows me to spend up to £250, contactless.

In 2019 I bought a ticket for a Steven Wilson gig at The O2, scheduled for September 2020. Paperless it was, using the AXS app. To use the ticket I had to have a smartphone with a 4G signal, with location services enabled, with date and time set to automatic, the AXS app running with the most recent release installed, and the brightness of the screen at a certain level. Covid put paid to the gig, so I didn’t get the chance to suffer the stress of worrying that one of those conditions might not be met and that I’d fail to get into the gig as a result. Or, more mundanely, that my phone battery might die, or I might lose the device en route to the venue.

I’ve been to gigs where I’ve used the Dice app to buy my ticket, and with that app, the QR code representing the admission ticket appears on the phone around two hours before the gig (it’s a tactic that is supposed to reduce the possibility of ticket touting), and that’s a little bit of stress added to the mix right there, being practically at the venue but not having the ticket – yet.

Even where tickets are not held in an app, buying them online and having them delivered by email is now the norm, and even though there is the option to show the ticket on your smartphone, I tend to prefer physically printing it out, because although I am happy to embrace technology, there still remains a risk – no matter how small – of it failing at the crucial moment.

Perhaps, like me, you’ve experienced the minor inconvenience of being out of the house and finding that an app you want to use has logged you out and you can’t remember the password (I checked, and I have 170 separate logons and passwords, and no I can’t remember them all). Fortunately, when it’s happened to me it hasn’t been anything crucial, but one day, it might be.

And that is just one potential flaw with smartphones and our reliance on emails and apps; we risk putting all of our eggs in one basket. When – and I hope it is soon – I can go to gigs again, the last thing I want is to be refused entry because I can’t access the ticket on my phone.

Sooner or later though, even the e-ticket, or the ticket on an app, will become old hat. The next big thing in ticketing could be Non-Fungible Tokens (NFT), which use blockchain functionality. I hope it is less complex than it sounds.