'Video Technology' Proves England 'Very Bad' at Soccer

SOURCE: The Daily Mash

TONE: Thoroughly satirical

THEME: English self-loathing following a humiliating 4-1 World Cup defeat at German hands

PREREQUISITE BACKGROUND KNOWLEDGE: The English team also, technically, scored a second goal. The ball bounced over the line but was then hauled back, reigniting debate about video replays.

THUS, THE THESIS: Video replays are good. They help determine just how awful the English team really is.

OR, MORE COLORFULLY:

The use of television has been a source of controversy in the sport, but experts insist it offers a fool-proof method for determining whether a team is good at football or whether it is simply a collection of absurdly over-compensated, second-rate commercial brands with ghastly, vulgar wives, locked in a sado-masochistic relationship with a cretinous media that merely reflects a society that has taken its natural intelligence, its sense of perspective and its values and violently drowned them all in a bucket of piss.

REFERENCES TO 'SLASH[ING] ... ACROSS THE ARSE WITH A MACHETE': 1

REFERENCES TO 'PAUL THE PSYCHIC OCTOPUS': 1

NUMBER OF GOALS GERMANY COULD HAVE SCORED: 290

AND A FINAL STAB AT ENGLAND'S SLUGGISH DEFENSE:

Meanwhile, central defender John Terry finally arrived back in England's 18-yard box last night only to find that everyone else had gone home.

He eventually got out of the stadium after climbing over a fence.