That’s the attitude that Graham’s talking about

No, you’re deliberately missing my point. England has had loads of champions in F1 and could well have another one soon (and Britain has had more than any other country). You can’t seriously accuse Lewis Hamilton of settling for second best: in the last three years he placed 1st, 1st and 2nd in the championships he raced in, and missed out on the F1 title by one point in his rookie season last year. At the moment he’s leading the championship again. Calling that ’settling for second best’ is myopic.

To Dean, in your thoughts on Tim Henman, you have just epitomised the whole mentality failure of our footballers: if you have flawless attitude and give everything on the pitch, you deserve to be a hero??

This is something you say to school kids, not professional footballers who are being paid millions of pound a year.

In Italy I have never heard that saying whereas in England I hear it regularly. It is true that we celebrate complacency and mediocrity in England but you need to realize that there are 195 countries in the whole world, 30 of which are more populated than us so for us to say we have to be #1 is a bit excessive, to me. I think we don’t need to win something to see it as a success. In the Rugby World Cup a year ago we lost in the final when we weren’t expected to reach the Quarter-finals, I consider it to be a success. I think it’s not important to participate, it’s important to do your best. When you think about it, 32 countries play in the world cup, 190 if you consider qualifications, it would be ridiculous if only one considered the world cup a success. South Korea didn’t win in ‘02 but they considered it a success, so why shouldn’t England be happy when we reach the last 8 or are top 20 in the world? Germany probably don’t consider Euro 2008 a failure. They lost to the better team.

I agree with some points but there were thousands of Germans who greeted them off the plane after Euro 2008. I know if you look at the Australian philosophy and attitude towards sport it is vastly different. Completely agree that English sport ought to do much better though.