Why England Lose at Football and Politics
I have to admit something before I start on this Blog. I was once an England football fan. Until around 1990 I was like many fans and had devotion to my club but thought of international football as a distraction. I did take part in some of the frenzy in 1996 when football came home to the middle-classes and created a culture where everyone had to have a favourite team. The Spice Girls all had a favourite team. They had no idea how long a game lasted, but they could all name their club. We now know that David Cameron loves football so much that he is a fan of both West Ham and Aston Villa. Younger readers may not realise that this was unusual before 1996.
However, one comment from 1996 is worth dwelling on for a moment. I remember Chris Evans (whatever happened to him?) talking about the aftermath of England's win against Scotland. He saw two camps outside the stadium, one full of people partying and celebrating and one full of people sitting around quietly pondering an uncertain future. He could not work out why the first camp was the losers and the second camp was the winners, England.
When I finally gave up with England and decided that I would follow Wales, I accepted that I would never be involved in any major tournaments and if I did by chance find Wales competing on the world stage then it would be to play a few plucky games in the group stages before being knocked out. England could go along expecting to win everything but Wales would be one of those nations that was just happy to compete.
However, the reason that England keep losing and cannot ever put together a victory party is illustrated by an incident that happened after I had converted.
I was sitting in a Cypriot barbers' shop having my hair cut. Represented in that room were fans of Cyprus, fans of Greece, a fan of Wales (me) and a fan of England (the man cutting my hair). The barber asked me what I thought of England's latest performance, elimination from a major tournament in the quarter finals. I said that I thought that that was about right. It had been a team good enough to get out of the group stages but no better than that. England should be proud of how they had done and look to the next qualification campaign.
My barber was shocked (and you should be careful shocking a man with scissors). He said, 'No, that's not right. England is the best team in the world. We invented the game. We have the best league in the world, we should win everything that we enter'. There was a pause before one of the Cypriot fans simply sighed and said, 'And that is why no-one likes England'.
You can see that attitude played out at the moment. A number of English people have mocked Wales's achievements in Euro 2016 but perhaps the most revealing comments have been from people claiming that Wales should not celebrate the team's homecoming because 'they haven't won anything'. This obsession with having to be the best and having to win everything is part of the problem. There is no football fan in Wales at the moment who will not think that the team performed brilliantly. They did not need to win to perform brilliantly and more than that, they never had the superiority complex to think that they had to do so.
Do you remember Wayne Rooney walking off the Wembley pitch attacking the fans for booing the England team? Did he ever wonder why they were booing? Was it that they were not happy with England's performance? Could it be criticism? Does Wayne Rooney believe himself to be such a player of God-like status that he should not be criticised? If the fans are capable of having a superiority complex then what about the players? Could that be why they went into a game against Iceland without a plan B or - as some cruelly said - a plan A? Iceland had clearly prepared for their opponents and worked out a system for playing them. I wonder what England had done - did they assume that they could just go out there and beat a lesser team? They have the best league in the world you know, they invented the game, they can beat anyone ...
Sadly this is not limited to football. The English rioters in Marseille who threw chairs at the police while chanting 'we are going to leave the EU' were not wrong to connect the English football ethos with politics. Their equivalents are Iain Duncan Smith MP and Andrea Leadsom MP talking about how the UK is 'the greatest country on earth'. It sounds fine, although no-one ever explains how they rank 'greatness' (and tediously they usually fail to realise that 'Great' in 'Great Britain' means large, not good and so they are not 'making Britain great' they are actually 'making Britain small' as Gibraltar, Scotland and Northern Ireland contemplate their own vote leave from the UK). There is no Plan B, there is no Plan A, there is just a belief that England must triumph.
Imagine if the likes of Iain Duncan Smith or Andrea Leadsom had a plan rather than meaningless platitudes that are supposed to sound patriotic? The true patriot has a healthy dose of realism and can achieve what is best for the country through co-operating with others.
Imagine if the next England manager admitted that England was not the best team in the world and that the aim was to put in a creditable performance at the next World Cup? Imagine if he could get all those superstars to work together as the Welsh team did? Imagine that instead of Rooney insulting the fans, the players applauded and sang with the fans like the Welsh team did?
However, England will take no lessons from Wales. England is the greatest nation on earth. England has the best football league in the world. England invented football. England should be winning everything just like in 1966.