Birthday boy Pico Lopes and Cape Verde are officially our team at the World Cup finals - WWN says so
Scotland are second best but is it time to add England to the list
Happy Birthday Pico Lopes. And here’s your present from the nation - recognition by Waterford Whispers News. So welcome to the wonderful world of Irish satire as practised by the finest in the business and on the day we get England and Declan Rice in our sights again.
On Monday evening, Irish time, the Shamrock Rovers captain was one of the stars of the show as Cape Verde marked their World Cup debut with a backs to the wall scoreless draw against European champions Spain.
It was a brilliant performance from the Crumlin native and his team-mates from the Atlantic ocean archipelago, the sort of story that separates the World Cup from your regular big sports events.
And he made headlines across the world, did our Pico with everyone from James Corden to Gary Lineker discussing how he became a Cape Verde international from Dublin 12.
Pico even drew the attention of Waterford Whispers News, the irreverent social media phenomenon that likes to take the piss out of Irish life.
Like the Phoenix magazine, Ireland’s Private Eye which sadly announced its closure this week after 43 years keeping solicitors business, WWN takes no prisoners on one hand. On the other hand, if you make it onto their feed then you can rightly claim to have made it in Irish life.
So well done Pico for your WWN arrival on Monday night, two days before your 34th birthday which will be celebrated on the seashore in Tampa with a squad who will never have heard of Waterford never mind this online satire outlet.
They won’t know that WWN are taking the mickey with their photo, attached, and the headline: ‘Ireland (Specifically Pico Lopes) Secure Historic Draw Against Spain’, in honour of that 0-0 draw with one of the tournament favourites on Monday.
Any Irishman or woman with half a football bone in their body will laugh at the humour, all the time aware that we are more than happy to claim Pico as Ireland’s World Cup representative this summer.
What else can we do? Prague ended our interest in the tournament so we can follow Cape Verde, adopt the Scots as our team and enrol in the ABE club one again - with membership of ABR thrown in for good measure.
That’s Anyone But England. And Anyone But Rice. Declan Rice. Once of this parish but dead to us now ever since he told Mick McCarthy to stick his Ireland shirt up his jumper and jumped ship to England.
Declan is a regular on WWN. We like to laugh at him and we like to laugh at his team. We will be smiling smugly on Wednesday evening when they begin their World Cup adventure against Croatia in Dallas.
And we will be wishing Croatia well, hoping that a 40-year-old Luka Modric can extend the 60 years of hurt for at least another 90 minutes. The Dublin Airport social media crew will probably even get in a dig or two at England if they lose tonight or, God forbid, miss another World Cup penalty.
To be honest, I’m starting to wonder if it is time to relax on the ABE stuff? Sure it’s fun, but I’m two years older than their World Cup anguish and it is starting to feel a bit dated seeing as how every single one of us in Ireland has a relation who is working or has worked in England, who is living or has lived in England. I’ve done it myself on at least three occasions for reasons of employment and they were always nice to me.
Yes, we have 800 reasons to hate the English but that is well and truly history now, just like their World Cup failures.
Maybe we should cut them some slack today - or at least try to even briefly before their big kick-off in Texas.
So let’s adopt an Englishman for a day. Or 11 of them. And let’s wish them well on their World Cup journey and acknowledge that they got there on merit - we couldn’t even get there on penalties!
Let’s make England our third team at the World Cup - after Cape Verde and Scotland! for!!!!!!