Jewels Remain Still Gleaming
A few years ago I wrote a blog about England’s football fans which was surprisingly misunderstood by some people. It started with a description of a conversation in a barber’s shop between men of different nationalities. They were discussing football and it was the English person who – despite abundant evidence that he supported a decent but not world class team – was convinced that not only could his team beat anyone but that they would win any tournament that they entered. Why? For the reasons that England has ‘the best league in the world’ (TM) and ‘the passion’. One of the other people there commented that this arrogance and sense of entitlement was why no-one liked England (in football).
Some people misunderstood this to be an attack on English people talking about their team which, in its own way, is quite revealing. What tells you more about entitlement than that the people who have it do not see it? It is rather like the man who likes to insist that ‘men have it so bad these days’ and will not accept that whatever challenges there are to the male gender, it is in a different historical context to the challenges faced by women.
In the last two years of travelling, I have had a lot of conversations about football. Whatever else you might say about Euro 2016, it did put Wales on the map for a lot of people and ‘I’m from Wales’ is now commonly met by ‘Gareth Bale!’. In Iceland last year, I was in a group of people from various nationalities taking a coach tour around a scenic part of the island (not that there is any other kind of part). One thing that we could all agree on was that Iceland’s victory in Euro 2016 over England had been enjoyable to watch. Why? A German fan summed it up – ‘England go into everything thinking that they will win just by turning up, so it is always good to see them lose’.
Before moving on to talk about English football in 2018, I think that I ought to pause to tell you the other reaction to the barber shop story. I told it to a friend of mine who simply replied, ‘And that’s Brexit’. I will admit that I had not made the link before, but I do think that he has a point. I do prefer Robin Ince’s description of Brexit Britain being like a recently-divorced man in his 40s who is convinced that now that he is ‘free’, he will be surrounded by beautiful 20 year old women wanting to sleep with him.
Though I want to observe that a lot seems to have changed in a very short period for English football, some of the old attitudes remain. It amused me to be berated by people for not supporting England in the 2018 World Cup. No free will involved, everyone must support England. I was even more amused when this insistence comes from English people who refused to support Wales in Euro 2016. You could see it too in the ITV analysis just before Extra Time in the semi-final against Croatia. The host asked, “Is it now all about pride and passion?” No you fool, it is about which team has the superior skill, tactics and that little bit of luck needed to score more goals than the other team. Ah, but only England have ‘the passion’ and that is why they must win everything.
I did once support England in football. It was a brief flirtation that lasted from the semi-final of the World Cup of 1990 through to the World Cup of 2002. That is hardly atypical, I suppose, especially around Euro ’96 and its slogan ‘football’s coming home’. The English claim to have invented football is dodgy of course and even the claim to have written the first rule book is a little tenuous given that those rules included picking up the ball and kicking your opponent. However, it was a good slogan and is now misunderstood to be about bringing a trophy to England thanks to The Lightning Seeds.
Actually, I do quite like that song, it has a clever focus on the agony of the supporter rather than the performance of the team. I wonder if the money made from royalties this summer is compensation for the fans mis-singing of lines, my favourite being ‘jewels remain still gleaming’.
Two of the reasons why I stopped supporting England were the fans and the team. Of course, as a club football fan, international football has always been a bit of a distraction every other summer and nothing like as important as the club game (those who do not follow football sometimes find it hard to grasp that a club fan would much rather see their club lift a trophy than their country). However, it is still important to have some attachment to the playing squad and whereas your local team might have someone local (even in Manchester or London) to identify with, international footballers have become increasingly distant from their fans. This surely reached its peak when Wayne Rooney walked off the pitch telling the camera that the fans should not be booing him. Well Wayne, try playing a bit better and they will not do that. I suppose that my lack of interest in England did come in tandem with the rise of the professional footballer as the pampered millionaire.
I have to be careful what I say about England fans because there are many who follow their team with dedication and a sense of realism. Not every one is like the fans who destroyed the paramedic’s car in Nottingham during celebrations of the win over Sweden or – my personal favourite – the fans who rioted in France in 2016, throwing chairs at the French police while shouting ‘victory to Isis!’ Yes, I am sure that Isis were noting that and making sure that their next suicide attack specifically avoided England football fans. Most England football fans are not violent or stupid. However, even when I was an England fan, it was a matter of embarrassment as another European city was subjected to the ‘fans’ expressing their ‘pride’.
This time the build-up seemed very low-key. The usual tabloid headlines deploying offensive national stereotypes were missing. The internet had the usual nonsense confusing football for warfare but even that seemed rather muted compared to before. I did not hear anyone suggest that England were going to win the World Cup, let alone that they would do just by going to Russia with superior ‘passion’, you know, the kind that other nations just do not have for football.
There were no star players either. All right, there was some controversy over Raheem Sterling’s tattoo (and someone did claim that none of the tabloids showed any black players in their pictures of the team celebrating) but generally this seemed like a bunch of decent, hard-working footballers who liked to relax by racing inflatable unicorns rather than getting uproariously drunk. Plenty has been written about Gareth Southgate as a manager too, but being gracious in victory and sensible and clear-focussed in your relations with the media and the fans has to be praised. Dare I say that he was a role model of male patriotism that anyone who has ever cringed at the image of more English hooligans going on the rampage can be thankful for?
This is not to say that there was not violence after England were beaten by Croatia, especially the now sadly predictable spike in domestic violence. However, this is not just England and football, there is a problem with international sport and violence that needs closer examination. Okay, international snooker is probably less likely to cause violence but you know what I mean, to say that this is an English problem or a football problem is to miss the point.
In The Three Elms where I watched England vs Croatia, there was a pretty even split of England fans and Croatia fans. Croatian shirts were reported to have sold out in Scotland, but in Wales there seemed to be a slightly more pragmatic approach (and to be fair, Scottish friends on Facebook were complimenting the England team). There was some rival cheering but everything was very good-natured. At the final whistle, someone went to the jukebox and put on ‘Three Lions’. The pub erupted into ‘England’s going home’, the Croatian fans singing ‘They’re going home’ and the England fans singing back ‘We’re going home’. There was nothing ill-tempered about any of it.
Will it last? With people already talking up Qatar 2022 as the time for England to win the World Cup then perhaps that sense of entitlement will return and a naive, young team will become cynical and distant. It is hard to see Gareth Southgate falling out with the press but maybe they will turn on him and start saying that he does not show enough ‘passion’ to be an England manager. I have no idea. However, I do know that English football won a lot more fans this summer, not just in the UK but perhaps further afield too. They have left previous memories and those are like jewels that will remain still gleaming once the summer sun has set. There is a song lyric in that I am sure.
