Underdog Ghana beat the mighty Three Lions of England 0-0 yesterday (because a draw is a win, in this case), and it happened in Foxborough, Mass., which prompted a fellow Civil War/history nerd friend to make an especially witty observation on Facebook.
He said the British not being able to handle a big underdog in Massachusetts seemed vaguely familiar.
Absolutely.
In fact, if you watched Ghana repeatedly blunt one scoring chance after another from Harry Kane and the Brits, you wondered (or at least I did) if Thomas Gage was looking on from the great infinite.
Gage, for the history-challenged in the audience, was the commander of the British occupation forces in Boston. He's also the guy who lost Boston thanks to his disastrous search for weapons on Lexington and Concord Day, and to Henry Knox hauling Fort Ticonderoga's artillery over the Berkshires to George Washington, who placed them on the Dorchester Heights and put Gage literally under the gun.
"Gee, Mr. Blob," you're saying now. "That's a lot of history. Now my head hurts."
Well, TOO BAD. 'Cause the Blob's famously twisted imagination has been working overtime again, and it's conjured up a juicy scenario: Gage, King George and a bunch of ordinary British soccer fans sitting in a working-class pub watching the last ten minutes or so of England-Ghana, when Kane and Co. should have scored multiple times but did what England always does in the World Cup, which is ... well, choke, not to put too fine a point on it.
Hit the crossbar and post a time or two. Booted the ricochet off one of those high, from point-blank range. Got robbed by Ghana's keeper a couple times, then robbed again when a Ghana defender, at the very last split second, headed clear a ball bound for the top corner.
In the end, England outshot Ghana 19-2 in the match. And couldn't find the back of the net with a single one of those 19 shots.
And so to that imaginary pub we go ...
George III: "Nineteen shots! For God's sake, I could have scored if you'd given me 19 shots. This is all your fault, Gage."
Gage: "MY fault? How can it be MY fault, your Majesty? I've been dead for 200 years!"
George III: "Because if you hadn't screwed up and lost us Boston, America would still be ours, which means Christian Pulisic, Alex Freeman, Folarin Balogun and that lot would be playing for us. And maybe THEN that choking dog Kane could have scored."
Ordinary British Soccer Fan (dressed in a Kane jersey and wearing a St. George's flag like a cape): "'Ey, 'ey, 'ey now, your Majesty. 'Arry's our man. He just had a spot of bad luck today, like all the boys."
George III: "And I had a spot of bad luck when I sent Gage to Boston to quell Adams and Hancock and that rabble."
Gage: "I'm SORRY, OK? How many times do I have to say I'm sorry?"
George III: "As many times as we hit the bloody crossbar today. For the love of the resurrected Christ, it's as if Ghana had two extra players manning the pitch for it. I could almost see Adams and Hancock sitting on top of the Ghana goal swatting away our shots."
Ordinary British Soccer Fan: "Yeah! Up those colonials!"
George III: "And that's another thing. Not only did we lose -- OK, drew, but still -- we drew with another bunch of colonials. And Ghana wasn't even OUR colony. It was a French colony. Which I suppose means those idiots will think of this as payback for the Seven Years' War or some such thing."
Gage (hopefully): "So this is FRANCE'S fault now? Does this mean I'm off the hook?"
George III: "Nah, this is still on you. I shoulda sent Johnny Burgoyne to Boston instead."
Gage: "But ... but your Majesty, didn't Burgoyne lose his entire army at Sarato-"
George III: "Ah, crap. You're right. What a lame-ass empire. Why couldn't I have been king of Ghana? At least they can play this bloody game."
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