Ich bin ein Englisher

The other day England played Germany at Wembley in a freundly; for the fifth time in a row they failed to triumph. The old stadium, the site of Englands only success in the World Cup (and aren't we all so fucking sick of hearing about it), was consigned to the maws of giant Caterpillars after a loss to Deutschland. The new stadium hasn't reinstated any home advantage against them, it would appear, despite what looked to me like a pretty average German line up. There were copious references to Englands 5-1 victory as well and I'm getting sick of hearing about that too. And I cannot usually summon the strength to watch McLarens England in a friendly. So why did I sit and watch it so avidly? Quite frankly because the moment the teams were announced we had the prospect of a compelling contest that went to the heart of the matter for any football fan: Loyalty. To whom does one owe allegiance?

Unlike some Sun readers perhaps, I don't see every contest with The Hun as a re-run of the second world war. And although I am English, I'm not sure that I particularly like the players who put on a white shirt with three lions on it. Most of them I wouldn't want as friends, and I don't respect or admire many of them as people. As for the "heroes" of '66, they were jammy. Eusebio's Portugal should have won I always thought. I would punch Geoff Hurst if I thought I could get away with it. Plus i've been to Germany a few times. They're alright, you know. The last time I went, I stayed just outside Hamburg. Cracking city for a visit (steer clear of the Rieperbahn mind you, it's a tourist trap these days). The north Germans are avuncular and funny people (our rather stereotyped view of austere and conservative Germans probably relates more to Bavarians than to other Germans), and boy do they love their football. I was asked to stand on a chair in a bar in Gluckstadt to "sing my football song" as part of a ritiual with some St Pauli fans who I now count as friends. I even have the chocolate brown 1910 St Pauli shirt as a memento.

Could I ever bring myself to not want England to win a match? No, I couldn't. But below that absolute standard I surprised myself with a degree of flexibility of feeling. Because at one end of the pitch was the current Arsenal No.1 goalkeeeper and facing him at the other end was the first-choice netminder for Tottenham Hotspur. Now there is a contest I can get behind. If, for the sake of argument, the match had been settled by a boxing bout between those two, I would hysterically cheer on the tall and pugnacious Teuton as he pummelled that fat twat to a jelly inside three rounds. And I would not have one qualm. Not even a little one. I know whose side I'm on.

What made the contest doubly interesting is that both keepers have had a shit start to the season. Jens has made what are known in the tabloids as two "howlers". Robbo has lost the first two off the reel. The first difference between them (apart from physique) is that Jens indiscretions didn't really cost the team that much. Healy got a very lucky break very early on but despite the anxiety we had, there was no robbery at the Grove as their might have been last year. Fulham were seen off and rightly so. Blackburn have a terrific fighting spirit and a neutral would certainly have considered their point at home well earned. Both goals were gifts in that game, so it was a zero sum. Conversely, Spurs have started the season as though they expect to roll all before them. They haven't worked nearly hard enough as a team for that. Amazingly, they look more hurriedly put together than Erikssons makeshift Man City mercenaries, despite being still largely comprised of the prem's fifth placed finishers from last term.

There is one other obvious difference between the two custodians that you can see if you look at their faces. The fat lad has looked perplexed that there is no Ledley King or Matt Dawson in front of him. He has a look on his face sometimes that you see on that of a stage actor who doesn't know the next line or on the faces of people who come out of the cinema during the day and can't remember where they left the car; some disjunct has occured, some momentary unfamiliarity with reality. He's almost annoyed that he now has to make a save. His positioning is presently based on very flawed reasoning, like he expects the ball and the other players to be in different places to the ones they have taken up.

Jens, by contrast, has a ready if slight quizzical smile and a worldly demeanour throughout. I swear I've seen his exact likeness in a war movie before; a young corporal, top tunic button rebelliously undone and Wehrmacht cap askew, unlit Pyramiden cigarette in the corner of his mouth, in the last seat of a truck headed for the fighting in Belgium. That same look; going to meet the enemy with a cool and amused indifference to your fate. I wouldn't say I know he is fatalistic, but he gives off that air. It is as if the things that go wrong are purely circumstantial. His core faith in his own abilities on the other hand remains unshaken by events. Perhaps Jens Lehmann believes in Karma?

In the match Jens was beaten at his nearpost by a thumper from Frank Lampard. Any keeper would be annoyed by that (most right thinking human beings are annoyed by Frank Lampards very existence). You really shouldn't be letting anything go by you on the nearside at the top level. c.f. Ian Walker unceremoniously dumped after letting a Zola half volley squirm by him. But Jens' position was actually fine. Lampard really punted the ball though. The accuracy he managed, like almost everything else about the charmed life of that man, was a fluke. Put the ball at Jr's pudgy feet 50 more times and get Jens to take up the same position and I doubt Frank could repeat it.

Robinson's position for the equaliser though was absolutely dreadful. His innate spring helped him reach back behind his head and bat the ball onto the bar, and that was pretty miraculous given where he had originally decided to stand and take guard. It promptly rebounded to the feet of a very grateful looking Kuranyi who rolled it home. The goal proved for me that - unlike Lehmann - Paul Robinson's head is not in the right place. And that head is telling the weeble beneath it the wrong place to stand. The second goal was down to really poor marking from Englands defenders in the main in the main. I wouldn't necessarily blame Robbo for that. But the eventual result was sealed: 2-1 to the Arsenal.

After the match I was sitting there feeling quite vindicated. "Our keeper is better than yours", I thought. "Once again our prospects for the season look a great deal healthier than yours. We will probably beat you in both derby games. We'll undoubtedly finish above you again in the league". It was only a little after that that I remembered it was England v Germany I had been watching. My bad?

One slight concern though. Jens, in a pre match press conference, made a very curious remark about the goal he conceded against Blackburn that I still can't get my head around. "I know why it happened. But I’m not going to explain it because there are too many English people around and I don’t want to give anything away!". Is he saying that he has, within him, some fundamental weakness that - were he to reveal it - England would be have able to exploit in the subsequent match? The revelation that he now has an ankle injury could be an explanation. Did he play the Blackburn and Fulham games carrying an injury? I think even all his ligaments snapping like knicker elastic and his foot facing 180 degrees the wrong way wouldn't excuse the limp double-fisted parry he conjured up at Ewood park. Does he then have a blind spot when it comes to chubby England midfielders? (Dunn could not be decribed as "svelte" even by a drunk estate agent). No, Jens has conceded goals against a variety of bodyshapes with equanimity.

So what on earth did he mean then? There is a rather obvious conclusion and it will be familiar to everyone who witnessed David Seaman in his final season and everyone who has begun to do battle with nose hairs in a mirror. Jens said the abberation at Ewood had "never happened to him before" in training or in a match, but that he knows why it happened. That means it is not freaky. There is an explanation that he is unwilling or unable to reveal because maybe its the one we don't even like admitting to ourselves. Not for tactical reasons that he chooses to keep his counsel then. I believe he has suddenly realised that his powers are on the wane. He has had that Damascene moment that all of us in our thirties get, the one where you realise that the crest of the hill is behind you, and you forgot to mark the moment that you were at the apex with any kind of ceremony; because you didn't actually know you were there at the time. You thought you maybe still had some climbing to do. Some thirty-somethings get this feeling repeatedly just looking at Lewis Hamilton. It can strike at any time but once that realisation dawns there is no going back. All you can do is have a crisis (really just some whimpering and self-indulgence) to prolong the moments before - armed with this new self-knowledge - you return to a civilisation and the paradigm of the being "middle-aged"). There, I said it.

It has nothing to do with birthday's by the way. There are a few simple checks you can do to see whether or not you are middle aged. Firstly have you ever had that moment of realisation described above? If not, there is hope for you that you are still working your way towards your peak. Would a witness describe you to a policeman as being a "middle-aged man"? If yes, go directly to the shed and fetch the lawnmower. You know you want to. Do kids answer you back? If yes, go directly to Clarks and select for yourself a pair of Burberry slippers, because kids are born with a priori knowledge of who they can and who they cannot outrun over 50 yards. Car-wise: comfort or speed? If you say "speed", you're in denial. Please ditch the ponytail and stop chasing women around the office.

It's not that 38 is that old. It might be that your professional peak is somewhat older than that, if you are an accountant. You might be a little disappointed if you'd been at the same law firm since qualifying and you hadn't made partner at 38. 38 would be fairly young on the board of directors of most Blue Chip firms. It may be the median age for pilots graduating to 747's from smaller aircraft or short-haul routes. And I wouldn't really trust a doctor who was any younger than that. For a footballer though, it's old, man. Even for a keeper it's a fairly advanced age. Dino Zoff pretty much tops the age range for custodians. (You know those people they find in rural china who are 138? Right, well that doesn't make anyone feel that they themsleves will probably live much longer than they had previously thought, does it? So Zoff should be ignored as an outlier on the basis of a Gaussian distribution of keeper retirement centered on 36).

When Spunky left, he was in denial (a pony tail remember, AND 19 appearances for Manchester City, which was nearly as embarassing at the time). He actually tried to reinvent himself as a figure skater, such was the level of his delusion. He then dropped some poor lass on her face. I reckon that's when it happened for him. As for Jens the simple expedient of extending both arms to punch a way a routine drive from 27 year old David Dunn and finding a certain limpness of wrist - that would not be out of place if Julian Clary did it, accompanied by a wink and the words "Cuff me, Officer" - did the trick. Now he has to go away and nurse his ankle. His replacement was dying his hair bright blonde and bouncing about and beaming pre-season (visibly emphasising his comparative youth, or firing an early warning shot at his own foot by trying to look like Canizares?). Alumunia will have to show some mettle this season. To be Arsenal first choice he needs a lot more aggression and authority. Fabianski is an excellent prospect but won't go straight in unless Manuel gets a knock. Plus we always seem to have keepers who come and go from the squad without troubling the first team. So Jens won't be giving up just yet. The obvious thing that Jens could do is the thing that Seaman never could bring himself to do and that was to coach the up and coming keepers whilst trying out for the first team. But that takes an uncommon degree of humility and self-knowledge. Something about having a big "1" on your jersey means you never ever give up the idea that you are number one. Someone else has to tell you that you're not. Maybe Jens has been told. My guess though is that he's smart enough to know.

P.S. Thanks for all the birthday messages this month, by the way. Yes, I really am only 36. Amazing isn't it? Watch out Cliff Richard.