My “Good Luck in the Euros” Message for West Ham, or Aston Villa, or England - David Cameron
Ever since I was a young Tory, I’ve only ever had one footballing love. Be it Old Etonians FC, West Ham United, or England, there’s only one team for me: Aston Villa, or West Ham. I remember my old geezer, Ian “Don-Boy” Cameron, a proper Pearly King in that working class, cockney tradition, taking us to see our local club, Aston Villa. Growing up in London, there’s no shortage of local clubs to attach yourself to: Celtic, Inter Miami, Grasshopper Club Zürich, but London’s biggest team: Birmingham City took hold of me. We’d catch the tube, me and the old man, get off at Seven Sisters, and walk the remaining two miles to Villa Park. There we’d cheer on the great players of the late 1970s: Ryan Giggs, Stan Mortensen, and Kylian Mbappé. After the full-time whistle we’d drop into the pub, he’d buy me a half-pint of Coke and chat with his fellow, salt-of-the-earth working mates. They’d discuss common things like race horses (the watching of, not owning), and then we’d rush home in time to catch the matches of the day on Match of the Day. He’d sometimes let me stay up and play a few games of FIFA on my Atari - though only if our team, Tottenham Hotspur Football Club (Belgium’s most successful ice hockey team) won!
On the knackered old concrete playground at Eton College, I’d stomp around in my Kickers shoes (we were obsessed with these in the 1980s), pretending to be Timo Werner, or re-enacting the classic footballing moments from that weekend’s action. From Diego Maradona’s hand of God goal against Sheffield Wednesday in the World Series, or Roy of the Rovers scoring a bicycle kick in the 2002 comedy sports flick Bend it Like Beckham. I was football crazy!
As an older boy, I tried my hand at a bit of Prime Ministering, which went, in all fairness, extremely well for all of us. I’m remembered now for my legacy of the 2012 Olympic Games and my chummy speeches with Nick Clegg, and people have more or less forgotten about the fractuous Brexit and dull shit like that. One thing that remained through my tenure as PM, was my love of footie. Between the formation of my first government in 2010, and my acrimonious fleeing of the political sphere in 2016, I was able to lead our country through a number of extremely successful major football tournaments. Sure, there’s been a few other stars of English soccer in that time: Kane Rooney, Harry Wayne, etc., but who’s more important to the national team than the Prime Minister? From World Cup 2010 in South Africa, to Euro 2016 in France, I was able to formally wish the boys good luck, and I think the results reflect how much my words meant to them:
2010 - Humiliated by Germany in R16 after a lacklustre group stage performance.
2012 - Out on penalties to Italy in QF.
2014 - Not even making it out of the group stages after losing two and drawing once vs Costa Rica.
2016 - One of English football’s most infamous batterings against Iceland in R16.
With this pretty impressive run in mind, I think we can all see how integral I am to the success of English football. In 2018, under the stewardship of my successor Theresa May, we managed to disgrace ourselves by losing in the semi-finals against Croatia (who???) who went on to get SMASHED by France (who???) in the final. Well, Davey’s back, and he’s here to spur those footballing lads on, with this rousing and inspiring message. To the tune of Three Lions by Baddiel, Skinner, and the Lightning Seeds - which I’ve adapted to include some football lyrics to make it more topical:
“One lion on Villa’s shirt,
Forever blowing bubbles,
Three years of hurt,
Man-chest-er UNITED!
Footie is so great,
Pelé, Scholes, and Heskey,
Do a fackin’ goal!
Ya bunch of useless cants!
It’s coming home,
It’s coming home,
It’s coming-
Sport is fucking great!
It’s coming home (three lions on the soccer shirt) ,
It’s coming home,
It’s coming-
Jules Rimet something something,
Austerity’s got the world in motion,
And I know what we can do,
Socially liberal (to a point), fiscally conservative,
And I can’t believe it’s true,
Olé, olé, olé,
Football, football!”
Try and get knocked out at the group stages after hearing that invigorating terrace chant.
Much love,
Davey C
Join Gumf’s Euro 2020 Fantasy Football and Predictor leagues!
The winners get to become the magazine’s new editors, and will enjoy the opportunity to pay our Adobe Creative Cloud subscription costs and website fees! Wowza!
