WELL, who did you follow in the World Cup?
Or, more importantly, did you follow England?
Did you support the country where you live? The country, perhaps, of your birth?
Did you identify with them and cheer them on?
And we all know by now that they were utterly disappointing but nevertheless, did you cheer on England?
You’ve only to look at the fallout from the shambolic goings on amongst the French team and the way it was treated in France to see that soccer, perhaps sport in general, and identity are often intertwined.
From the GAA parish to the millionaire activities of the soccer players, sport says something about who we are. So people here are still surprised to hear my accent and hear that I don’t support Engerland.
Not that, I admit, this time around I felt quite the hostility to them that I often felt in the past.
Somehow, when I lived in England, the thought of them winning a major tournament made me think I would have found the tabloid-crowing years afterwards unbearable.
But I have to say that this time around, like one of the lads I went to the World Cup with said to me recently, I wasn’t bothered either way. I was neutral where England were concerned.
Fairly neutral anyway. Not even the most blinkered football fan could have found them a team to be admired. They didn’t exactly light up the tournament, did they?
Which is why I have found some of the attitude towards the England team here in Ireland something of a mystery.
Tom Humphries, a very good Irish Times sports journalist, offered one of the best examples of it when writing about the World Cup before the tournament had even started.
Now admittedly Humphries was going for humour in his article but he did pinpoint some interesting aspects of the Irish mind-set when it comes to sport and the contradictions that are inherent in it.
“Cheering against the English has been our birthright and it had little to do with hate or history or confusion about geography. It had little to do with football. It’s called begrudgery and it’s just fun! It has been part of what we are.” Fair enough and as he goes on to say of himself,
“I was born in England and lived and worked there in my 20s.
I follow Leeds United.” All well and good, all genuinely quite funny.
When I was growing up in England my dad took me once to Wembley to see England play. I was obsessed with football as a kid and going to Wembley, to see an international against Italy, well, that was a hell of a treat.
I don’t remember in any way that we were supporting them though and as I became an adult I remember that the boys of The Land of Hope and Glory could never have really been my team. England, so what, they were nothing to do with me.
And, I admit, I even fell into that thing of very actively not wanting them to win. I recall the 1996 European Championships and I was still living in England then and I remember thinking just how unbearable it would be if they’d won and crowed and crowed and crowed about it. On and on and on. I thanked God they were still rubbish at penalties.
This time around I didn’t think that. I thought, so what if they win? It’s not really going to affect me over here, is it?
Admittedly I wasn’t put to the test but I didn’t feel bothered either way. So why did so many Irish football fans want England to lose?
Why did so many followers of Man U or Liverpool, wearing their team’s colours day in day out, so badly want England to fail?
I don’t quite get it. I thought I was supposed to be the one with the confused identity.
You’ll nearly all know of the RTÉ pundit and master controversialist Eamon Dunphy. Prior to the World Cup, Dunphy said this.
“The English Industrial Revolution underclass, I always hated that being associated with my sport, which is actually quite a beautiful sport.”
Now, putting aside Dunphy’s ability to say anything that will get him noticed, there have been fewer sporting comments as simply stupid as that. Football, which is my sport too, comes from the English industrial class.
That is why cities like Manchester and Liverpool have the clubs they have. No, I’m lost. I just don’t quite get it. Why do they hate Engerland so much?