It's not been a good week for Shakespeare's "sceptre'd isle". Just days after the Brexit vote, England crashed out of the Euro 16 soccer championship today with a 2-1 defeat by....Iceland. The shell-shocked TV commentators described it as England's worst result since a 1950 loss, by 1-0, to the United States, at the 1950 World Cup in Uruguay. That result was a fluke -- England dominated the play but somehow failed to score; in contrast, the only surprise in today's result was that Iceland didn't score more.
Like David Cameron, the England manager Roy Hodgson barely waited for the din of battle to abate before quitting his post. Like the country itself, the England football team must now scramble to find a new boss before hostilities/negotiations resume in earnest in the early fall.
Tell me if I'm stretching things here, but it seems to me there's one common factor between the Brexit outcome and today's soccer result: geezers. Analyses of the Brexit vote show that it was older voters who led the charge to Leave; younger voters, who now stand to be the victims of their elders' irresponsibility, voted Remain. And Roy Hodgson? He's 68 years old, which you'd think might make it difficult for him to relate to his team. The substitute he sent on in the dying minutes of the game, Marcus Rashford, is a full half-century younger than Hodgson.
What a crew we baby boomers are! We've always had our own way, and as events in the UK this past few days show, we have no intention of going gentle into that good night. What toll that's going to take on younger generations, time alone will tell.
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