Paul: Yes.

 

Todd: So first let's talk about England. How did you feel about the result?

 

Paul: I've become a little bit kind of apathetic towards my country and these international competitive arenas. The thing about the English is that they think that they're up there with the best but more often than not we get reminded that we're quite mediocre. Maybe there was a time in the past where we were very dominant and kind of important as far as dictating how things ran but I think that period's ended. We had the face of Beckham, we had the Prime Minister come and was there and we had Prince William and some other high ranking faces, if you like, but from what I've read the campaign, the head of the FA, the Football Association, was completely, he was another one of a long line of people who were inadequate running the Football Association. There was the BBC who released a program about corruption within FIFA weeks before the poll, the vote, so it didn't really come as a surprise to me as much as it did some of my other fellow countrypeople.

 

Todd: So a lot of people back in England thought that for sure you would get it?

 

Paul: It seemed that way, yeah, a lot of, speaking to some of my friends back at home they were like yeah we're quids in, the World Cup is coming to England. I think the campaign was kind of based on the football history of England and the passion that we have for the game and the current high level of facilities that we can provide. But I guess there was a bit of a shock like there was a shock at the England team's performance at the last World Cup. If you watched the game versus Germany, it was embarrassing, we were outclassed and not many other countries have much sympathy for England in this situation.

 

Todd: One thing though about your country when it comes to football, you really do have a lot of pressure I would say from the media. I mean there's a lot of maybe unrealistic expectations put on the team's performance and maybe that kind of leads to its downfall.

 

Paul: Yeah. The media circus yeah is very intense and there's this kind of pattern that keeps repeating itself whereby people are heralded as being the saviour and the best in the world and then they make a mistake and then they're completely destroyed. It happened to David Beckham earlier in his career where he was heralded as being the future of England and he made a small mistake and got sent off in a big game and the media response to that was just embarrassing. They really tore him to pieces so we do have this problem with the media circus within England which kind of could be said to be responsible for generating this false sense of confidence. So yeah I agree with you on that point.