Unhappy and inglorious: England can go well in the World Cup if they relax and be themselves

SHOULD YOU AS an Irish person cheer for England in the World Cup because you follow an English club side?

Does a bit of tacit support for the once-colonising neighbour show your ability to get over things? 

Who cares?

The argument is bizarre and, in my experience, played out on the page rather than real life. I’ve rarely encountered an Irish person urging me to support England come tournament time in the name of national maturity. What I have met are loads of Irish people who say they would never support England – and you shouldn’t either.  

It’s a stance backed by a certain amount of logic, though for some of us, it is more complicated. There isn’t much pure blood in the world today, despite what many a patriot reckons to be true. 

More than 200,000 people living in Ireland were born in England or Wales according to the CSO. Many of them will have an affinity for both national sides. The same might be true of those here with an English parent or two, or the millions of people in England who have Irish heritage. 

It can be easier to pick a side, and most people will have a stronger affinity for one over the other, but it’s OK to like both teams. I did so as a small child, before throwing my lot in with Ireland around Euro 88 because a) Ireland were good then and b) I was proving less than resilient to the slagging I got for cheering on England – not too loudly mind you, I wasn’t completely oblivious. 

Anyway, you get older and stop caring about what others think and revert to type – in my case support for Ireland, no matter how bad things get, and a kind of disappointed concern for England. Whether that amounts to support, I’m not sure.

But as someone who was born there, and lived there for a few years here and there, and has London roots going back as far as can be traced, I like to see them do well. Mainly, I want to see England get out of their own way and be the kind of team that represents who they actually are. 

Angles 

We had a few pre-World Cup meetings here in The 42 a while back. Lots of great ideas were put forward, and you will have read many of the finished versions by now. Among the mournful subjects were filed under Irish angles, the most obvious angle of us actually being over there to play games being unrealised. So there was Pico Lopes and Cape Verde, a feelgood story like few others. There was former League of Ireland players from Mexico, Irish backroom staff members, and plans to spend an evening with Irish-based Brazilian fans. 

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All fine ideas, but there is of course a far more obvious Irish interest in the World Cup that comes wrapped up in the flag of St George. You have Declan Rice, fully Irish qualified and former U21 international. Harry Kane’s dad is from Co Galway. Jude Bellingham has an Irish grandparent. That’s their three best players for starters.

Anthony Gordon could have played for Ireland. Jack Grealish could be at the World Cup now if he’d stuck with us. You could go on through this generation and all of the previous ones. It’s the same for other former colonies, and that’s the nature of imperialism I guess. Along with the more malign and violent consequences visited on nations, you end with a lot of people from different parts of the world living together in, in this case, English cities.

Not far off every great band or musical movement in England in the past 70 years has been backboned by immigrants. From the Celtic flavour to the Beatles, The Smiths, Dexys and Oasis to the Caribbean beat behind reggae, ska, jungle, hip-hop, trip hop and dancehall, you could go on. If you listen to this music, which we all have over the years, you would form the view that England is an interesting and exciting place. And if you go to football matches there your opinion would be largely the same. 

Yet then you might watch the England football team, who have had their moments in the past decade to be fair, but are fairly reliably less than the sum of their parts. 

Something about the whole project is out of whack. They’re nearly always a disjointed, frantic team, in perpetual reach for the panic button. 

Stage 

Why is this? Many a reason, but perhaps Shakespeare, their most celebrated export pre the Premier League, had it right when he said, “All the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” 

England play the wrong part. They forever look like they are in frightened pursuit of a concept of Englishness that exists mainly in the minds of tabloid newspaper editors of the 90s. Your numbskull ‘send him victorious’ yeomanry of the shires. Getting stuck in while carrying water and knowing your place and every other cliché you can think of. 

Expressions of individuality are not encouraged. One of many examples, but Aaron Lennon caused a red top meltdown when he pictured smoking a cigar in the days after England were sent packing from the 2010 World Cup. There were many reasons for England’s demise in South Africa, and cigars were not high among them. 

The tabloid content is not the same now, and their influence has waned. But they have been replaced by something which, incredibly, manages to be worse. 

England are still on a PR footing come these tournaments in the social media age. Of a mind that if we’re going to lose, then we’ll lose and not be involved in some scandal or other. Which is not the right attitude. These contrived scandals are only a problem if you pay attention to them, which the FA have traditionally been prone to do. 

They were less than impressed back in 1996 with the dentist’s chair drinking episode that preceded the Euros. Fortunately for the team, they were managed by Terry Venables, a man who didn’t care for such nonsense and didn’t look too distressed when the players celebrated a Paul Gascoigne goal against Scotland by reenacting the so-called outrage. 

England thrived under Venables, a man with a great football mind, but also someone who seemed to like the players and treated them like adults. 

More regularly, England have spent long stretches in hotels with strict enough rules. This does not suit them, which to be fair Gareth Southgate addressed by bringing in a more humane regime, basing the squad in resorts with plenty of activities and where a calm environment was fostered. 

Sounds more relaxed than Baden-Baden… but boring. Would it be the end of the world if they were just allowed to come and go and do their own thing? If that involves going to the bar and having a few drinks with a bunch of clowns filming it on their phones, then so be it. Again, it is only a problem if you allow it to be. You will never appease the social media gallery, nor the tabloid’s self-appointed moral police, so don’t even try. Just tip around, be yourself, relax and play your football. Do that and England can go quite well. 

Not so well as to actually win this World Cup. Spain are better technically, France have more firepower, Argentina are more streetwise, but England can go far and not bore us in the process if they have fun instead of indulging the turgid, stolid brand of Englishness to which they feel some kind of inherited debt. 

Streets and courts

They are so much better than that. There is an England of tedious sludge, and there is an England of Harry Kane’s straight-up mastery of football and a way of seeing the world in curved lines that comes straight from Connemara. There’s Eberechi Eze and Djed Spence and the spark and guile of the South London cages. Kobbie Mainoo, like the sadly absent Phil Foden, a son of Stockport’s streets and courts, able to control a ball and bend a moment to his will. Anthony Gordon and Kirkdale-honed skills that have launched him to Barcelona. 

Everywhere in the England squad are the kids of immigrants who made their way from the streets and cages to the academies and first teams of Premier League sides. Nobody did them any favours; they got here through talent, joy and sweat, the same as so many from this island have started at the bottom over there and worked through the levels. 

There will always be a them-and-us dynamic to the England-Ireland relationship. For many, though, it has long since come to be just us. 

I hope this England team can play free and represent the streets they grew up on and the places their elders left and took with them.