Supporting the England football team isn't fun is it? Sunday night was purgatory. Quite a lot about our national identity evokes mixed feelings, but what happens that changes sceptics to full on bouncing, jabbering national believers when the football comes round again?
Despite the flurry around Jubilee celebrations and a recent softening of national self recrimination in this time of recession it is still unthinkable for most of us in our right minds to hang a flag out of our window. Casual indifference to nationality is instead what it means to be specifically English, couched perhaps in gentle pride in music and artistic expression, prominent entertainers, engineers and nostalgic notions of family and industry and free will.
Why did I nearly have a heart attack watching England last night then? So obviously a gulf in class gaped between the two teams, what was it that still made it heartbreaking to lose that match?
1. Heroism of the Man
A story of arms and man. Scottie Parker and Steven Gerrard in that England team last night. Old in footballing terms, and how we all want a last chance, for it to work out well this once for a player nearing the end. We are desperate for it to work out well, just once, for the person who (however belatedly) shows some humility and genuine desire to put his all into a difficult venture. With the odds stacking up against these modern heroes, it is an emotive buy in.
2. National Identity or Primitivism
All the lads sang the national anthem as though it was a song that meant something to them (I can hardly believe I am typing this). England football teams of the past have looked surly and uninterested at this kind of detail. They all spoke in balanced terms to the media, with signs of humility and a wish to do well. It felt natural and we bought into their restricted, simple game-plan. Such community induces a wish to fight for the same tribe. This was simple and understandable tribalism, the kind that would once have been called war, or at least politics. It still excites us, underneath all that sophistication, to be part of an army.
3. Nostalgia
Is there something in the ritual of tournament football? It reminds us where we were. In 1986 recording the game on VHS and watching in disbelief as John Barnes came on and nearly swung it back in our favour in the 'hand of God' match. 1990 staying up late through that agonising semi-final and penalties. I can remember what was happening in my life at the time of each major football tournament, even the ones we failed to qualify for. Even more poignantly, we can recall the relationships of that time, the reactions of loved ones. What other events do this so powerfully?
4. Belonging
This is different from ideas of national character, or tribalism. Also present in a major tournament are other nationalities and footballing cultures, playing the game in different ways, and with different emotional reactions. It allows a forum for wider issues. Some - I think of the treatment of one ubiquitous notion of 'racism' through the narrow gauze of a football festival in the Ukraine and Poland - are not advanced really as issues beyond some trumpet blowing. Others, of belonging to what was once an amateur sport, and to a community that covers the whole world, evoke a strong sense of involvement in something larger than the self.
5. The Joy of Flow
We didn't witness this, apart from one brief moment when Walcott darted for Welbeck to pirhouette to win the game against Sweden. I think here of Michael Owen scoring that goal in 1998 as the single most 'flow-filled' experience as an England fan - despite being blind drunk in a bar in Fleet at the time. Getting blind drunk can be 'flow filled' too of course, but this kind of flow comes from those moments that the pieces seem to click and a poetry of slow motion plays out from the maelstrom. It is what keeps us coming back after 120 minutes of the most turgid, heroic, ugly and fascinating 0-0 draw, the promise that something exquisite might still happen.
Ultimately, it is because these people represent what we are going through on some level, in their endeavour, and in their attempts to transcend the caricatures of themselves, especially against the odds. Ultimately, as an England fan, it is because we know they will lose (except they might. just. win. this. time.)