The inclusion of 17 year old Theo Walcott on the England World Cup has had a fascinating effect on English football fans. You might think that the inclusion of a boy who has never played a minute of first team soccer and who has only been seen by those handful of people in reserve games (his entire league career consists of just 1334 minutes of playing time and four goals, stats that are not dissimilar to those of my rec league career), might lead commentators either to call for the immediate dismissal of Sven on the grounds of insanity or generally to despair. But it hasn't. Reaction has been extraordinarily positive, both among sports journalists and fans in general. Which begs the question: has the entire nation gone bonkers?
Perhaps. But the fascinating thing about this whole affair is that they are in favor of Theo precisely because they have not seen him. All anyone knows is that he's 17, he's fast, and Arsene Wenger thinks he's good. Essentially, Theo is a tabula rasa, a blank slate on which fans can project their hopes for success. By including Theo, Sven has turned the national mood around 180 degrees from the gloom about Wayne Rooney's metatarsal. You see, there's a precedent for fast 17 year olds in the World Cup, and as long as we don't... you know... actually see him beforehand, we can believe he's the new Pele.
Marina Hyde makes precisely this point in her Guardian column today, saying that the inclusion of Theo is the potential set-up for an irresistible narrative, and so of course everyone likes him. She also compares Sven to Ibsen, which I thought was something of a stretch, until this biography informed me that Ibsen "had a few episodes of friendship with young women." They also have the same glasses, but Sven does need to work on the sideburns:
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