Simon Kuper
‘Football reveals a confused and surprisingly warm English-European relationship’
Football and England’s secret Europhilia
Illustratio on Luis Grañena
ft.com/magazine june 18/19 2016
up fingers at French policemen, but England’s hardcore fanbase is a drunken caricature of the Brexiters’ silliest instincts. However, the team the fans watched that evening stands for a rather different English relationship with Europe. English football struggled for decades with an identity crisis: are we European or not? Should we play a clever short-passing European game, or stick with the traditional never-say-die British warrior style? Graham Taylor, England’s manager from 1990 to 1993, was clear: “Our failure has not been because we have played the English way but because we haven’t. Bloody football should be honest, open, clear, passionate. Part of a nation’s culture, its heritage, is the way it plays its sport. And the British way is with passion and commitment.” However, Taylor failed so spectacularly that the “British way” was then binned for ever. In 2001 England began hiring continental managers. Their current manager, the multilingual Roy Hodgson, is practically a continental in disguise, having coached across the water for decades. In the first half against Russia, his England produced a copybook short-passing continental game. In football, Little Englanders have lost the argument. And in football, too, the English have ditched English exceptionalism and learnt to hemsellves as just anoth her country. For see th
decades, there was national disbelief each time England failed to win a tournament. Surely the motherland of football was destined to rule the game? But in the past few years the English have reduced their expectations to near zero. Hardly any pundit went into Euro 2016 recycling the traditional line, “Could this be England’s year?” There is a growing awareness that England doesn’t have a manifest destiny, and that the British empire’s spell ruling the waves was an unrepeatable one-off.
Y
ou see a similar awareness in politics. A few nostalgic Brexiters such as Nigel Farage think the days of British greatness can be recaptured if only the UK votes “Out”. However, these fantasies haven’t struck a popular chord. If Britons vote to leave, it will be chiefly because of immigration. There’s one last thing that Euro 2016 reveals: a hidden subterranean English Europhilia. The cliché is that the hooligans are an unrepresentative minority of England fans. In fact, you could go a step further and say: England fans are unrepresentative of English fans at Euro 2016. As at every tournament, there’s a vast brigade of English people here going to matches not involving England. The day affter Englland d-R Russiia, I spotted d severall at Turkey-Croatia in Paris: quiet, overweight men in non-partisan T-shirts, marvelling att the genius of Croatia’s Luka Modric or the architecture of the Parc des Princes. England has both some of the world’s worst and the world’s best football fans. The latterr might not say it or even realise it,, but they love many things about Eurrope. You see it every week in the English Premier League: packed-out crowds chanting the names of continental heroes such as José é Mourinho, Mesut Ozil and (forr years after he went home) Eric Canttona. Even if the English vote “O Out”, their national pastime drrips with a Europhilia thatt rarely botherss to speak its name. 6 simon.kuper@ @ ft.com; Twitteer @ KuperSimon
Opening shot
T
he political question of next week is how the English feel about Europe. I say “English” rather than “British” because the 54 million English who make up 84 per cent of the UK’s population are more likely than Scots, Welsh or Northern Irish to vote to leave the European Union in Thursday’s referendum. It’s often said that the English – even those who will vote “Remain” – are overwhelmingly Eurosceptic. However, football reveals a more confused and surprisingly warm English-European relationship. A nation is a nebulous concept. But the moment when you can almost see England, when the nation becomes flesh, is a big match of the national football team. England’s opening game of the European Championship against Russia last Saturday drew 14.1 million TV viewers, the UK’s largest audience of the year so far. Little else brings the nation together. England’s cricket matches are almost all behind the paywall, the most watched TV programme on Christmas Day drew just 6.6 million British viewers last year (down more than two-thirds since 2001), and pubs are losing their role as meeting places much as churches did before. The UK is peculiarly atomised even by modern standards. Britons are the EU’s loneliest people, with h large numb bers not haviing strong friendships or knowing their neighbou urs, according to the Office for National Statistics. England’’s ride at Euro 2016 is, therefore e, a rare and revealing shared national moment. I was in Marseille for England--Russia, and on display was whaat you might call the dark Europe-h hating id of the Brexit campaign. Groups of England fans seized the strategic heights of Marseille’s Vieux Port in a sort of parody y of their grandfathers’ invasion of Europe, and then broadcast Europhobia. They told d the French, “If it wasn’t for the English, you’d be Krauts”; sang the old favourite es about German bombers and the IRA; and capped it with, “F*** off ff Europe, we’re all voting out.” I kn now that most “Out” voters arre upstanding citizens who don n’t go around sticking
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