There were plenty of extreme reactions to England’s Euro 2016 exit at the hands of Iceland, a defeat so gruelling even the players’ faces seemed to deteriorate in the late stages, mouths drooping, skin the texture of wet cardboard, resembling in their TV close-ups the kind of doomed minor zombie-movie characters who end up lying sweating on their bunks saying things like “It’s not … much of a bite” as the chief zombie-terminator shoots a pained look at his No2 and tenderly cocks his rifle.
A common response was to accuse the players of being weak and spoiled, lacking in basic depth of character rather than things such as skills, tactics and leadership. Ryan Giggs, commenting on television, identified a “washbag culture”, an idea of spinelessness and cowardice based around also owning a washbag, of a team so caught up with unctions and gels there is literally no neural space left to retain details of how to defend Aron Gunnarsson’s long-throw routine.
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