THE PENALTY TAKER'S FEAR OF THE PENALTY

What if I told you that Harry Kane missed that second penalty for England on purpose?

You'd probably think I was crazy. Well, actually I am crazy, but I still might be right about this one thing.

My premise is simple. Harry Kane believes in the innate greatness of England and took compassion upon the French, those historically and politically cuckolded allies of ours to prove we could throw the game because we're far more comfortable in defeat than our Gallic cousins. Besides, since Brexit, England has become the perennial whipping boy for all other western nations to scoff at and relish our seemingly endless demise. And we're cool with it. Being hated and mocked by the rest of the world is something we can handle actually quite well. British humour helps, of course, with our indefatigable appetite for self deprecation and self destruction.  

No, actually I would be more concerned if we had thrashed the French and what it might have done to their far more fragile sense of collective identity. I fear it would be too much for a nation pre-disposed to moroseness, melancholy and depression to consider going home early to a disappointed President Macron for Christmas.

And there was one other reason Kane missed the penalty, aside from the fact he clearly had a "Spursy" moment in the nerves department. He knew that England must pay a price for all its excessive and hypocritical virtue signalling of late. A missed penalty was the price we had to pay for our post-colonial hubris, lecturing other nations on morality while we're in the midst of some kind of Mao style cultural revolution of wokeness.

Yes, he wore the anti discrimination badges as he was told to do, but when he saw the opportunity to help send England through to the semi-finals he deliberately squandered it and taught the arbiters of woke morality where to go.

In the end I consider his spectacular miss a patriotic gesture - a teachable moment to the corporate suits at The FA who were convinced success on the field goes hand in hand with virtue signalling off it.

Sadly, we now know it doesn't, otherwise all the other teams in the tournment would be doing the same empty gestures without hesitation before each game.

So, in the end I'm resigned to the defeat we suffered knowing that the subversive cultural warrior Kane, though seemingly not able enough, was actually very well aware of what he was doing all along.

It wasn't fear but courage that compelled him to do it.

And although it wasn't quite an Agincourt moment, it'll do after a year, indeed another Annus Horribilis, in which we've lost our 70 year reigning monarch, seen two prime ministers despatched in ruthless fashion and been held hostage by a bald Trotskyite maniac who resmembles Daddy Warbucks in the movie 'Annie'.

Or maybe it was just an awful penalty?