Sport is like economics. There are as many opinions as pundits, and England’s football failure in South Africa has been to the back pages what the September 2008 banking crisis was to the financial pages – the commentariat ballooned to include social, psychological and political analysts and for a couple of days at least England’s early exit engulfed the front pages, the editorial pages and the op-ed pages too.

Even more, sport is like art. It mirrors life. The continued failure of our national football team mirrors an underlying and largely unacknowledged crisis in our national life and reflects the erosion of character, confidence and self-belief – and ultimately of identity.

I watched the team’s passionless effort against the Algerians and initially was angry at these soccer millionaires who seemingly couldn’t be bothered to turn up against the younger hungrier harder-working North Africans. Our underperforming Ferrari-driving soccer stars became – to me at least – objects of derision and disgust, rather like credit-crunch bankers with their bonuses.

Then I looked closer. The team’s jittery performance betrayed not a lack of talent and teamwork but a lack of assurance and conviction – it wasn’t physical skill that was missing but mental and moral strength.

We’d lost the match (well, not won it) before it started. The problem was spiritual. Faced with the biggest of international stages the players once again collapsed internally and collectively were overcome with doubt, fearing they might not win against the Algerian footballing minnows. Inevitably they produced another brittle edgy performance – and didn’t. Fabio Capello highlighted the problem last year (here): when he took over as manager he found “the same players who played well in training played with fear (in the matches), with no confidence, and I said this is a big problem of the mind.”

Why does this football failure mirror and highlight the national lack of confidence if Brits (and Northern Irish) are currently succeeding in other sports (we’ve just beaten the Aussies in one-day cricket; Graeme McDowell won the US Open; Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button are currently one-two in the Formula One drivers table; and at the time of writing Andy Murray is through to the semi-finals at Wimbledon)?

Easy. Football is the people’s game. Cricket, golf, Formula One and tennis, like vicarage croquet, are middle-class sports and during international competitions the national flag is nowhere to be seen outside the competition venue. Football is full-blooded, classless and reaches parts other sports cannot reach – and during the World Cup hundreds of thousands of England flags bedecked homes and cars across all social groups, and especially on council estates and in deprived inner-city areas. It represents ordinary England like no other activity. Famously and only half-joking, former Liverpool manager Bill Shankly articulated the grip of football on English hearts: “Some people think football is a matter of life and death. I assure you it’s much more serious than that.”

The flag-waving however was simply a bravura show of tribal loyalty and hope that didn’t match the doubting hearts underneath – hearts that in previous eras were more confident, more believing and more self-assured. No one thought that England would actually win the Cup in 2010 and most weren’t surprised when the team failed to shine in the first match against the USA. Following that game, dormant doubt became active self-fulfilling prophecy in players and nation alike, and three games later the Germans – inevitably the Germans – took us apart and dumped us out of the tournament.

Fortunately, while the English have lost their sense of identity and self-belief, they can still take it on the chin – and it’s this that sets them apart from their prickly neighbours across the Channel. While French President Nicholas Sarkozy and colleagues bemoaned Les Blues’ even more ignominious exit from the tournament with haughty Napoleonic mutterings about national disgrace, loss of glory and dishonouring the French colours, the English cried into their beer and got on with their lives.

“At least the crap’s gone so I can now enjoy the football,” said one supporter. “No more anxiety and stress,” said another, “I’m off to watch the Brazilians.”

Last night I attended the 10th anniversary celebrations of City Gateway (www.citygateway.org.uk) a Tower Hamlets-based charity that works with deprived and disengaged youth and women with low aspirations and low language abilities, bringing them skills, motivation and ambition. ‘Ten Years of Bringing Hope to Tower Hamlets’ was the theme of the event.

It was a glittering affair held in the East Wintergarden at Canary Wharf with its spectacular 27 metre high arched glass-roofed atrium. 400 of us munched canapés, quaffed bubbly, fruit juice or Red Bull (I suppose exhausted City-types from Canary Wharf need the caffeinated energy drink after a hard day of crashing FTSEs, dwindling bonuses and shrunken expense-account lunches) and we listened to two government ministers – Andy Burnham and Stephen Timms – lauding the virtues of City Gateway.  There can’t be many young charities with such establishment pulling-power.

Stephen Timms gave out awards and certificates, and told us proudly how the Prime Minister had appointed him the Labour Party’s first-ever Vice-Chair for Faith Groups – a fact that was reiterated on the large screen above his head. Another indication of the rise of religion in public life?

All this was a far cry from my last visit to the East Wintergarden during the small hours of 6th May 2005 where, following a tense General Election count, George Galloway was declared the new Respect MP for Bethnal Green & Bow. He promptly proclaimed “Mr Blair, this is for Iraq”, and then proceeded to slag off Tower Hamlets Council’s Chief Executive – who could not defend herself – for running an election “that would disgrace a banana republic”.

The speakers yesterday were far more impressive, none more so than Eddie Stride, City Gateway’s Chief Executive, and Dirk Paterson, Chairman of the Trustees. They explained how the charity had struggled in the early days and how staff had given up well paid jobs to work with the organisation and help achieve the vision.

Since then they had not looked back and many of the charity’s beneficiaries drawn from Tower Hamlets’ different communities were there to give testimony as to how City Gateway had changed their lives for the better. The organisation has deliberately targeted hard-to-reach people; a third of Tower Hamlets’ population is of Bangladeshi Muslim origin, half of whom are under 20, and over 30% are unemployed.

Eddie and Dirk explained the strong Christian roots of the charity, of which I was previously unaware. The founders were professional people from local churches and their faith was their motivation. “Jesus taught that we should love our neighbours and City Gateway is our attempt to do so,” said an unashamed Eddie in front the worldly-wise Canary Wharf business executives.

My only regret was that City Gateway partners had to finance this stylish event rather than put their money into the charity’s work on the ground. But that’s the name of the game these days for those who want to tap into CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) funding.

All in all it was an impressive showcase for an impressive organisation.

The British, we are told, are suffering from a national identity crisis. Who are we? What is it that makes us British? What are our common values? What do we believe about ourselves and our place in the world?

Of course the debate is not new. It has been going on at least since 1962 when US Secretary of State Dean Acheson said, “Britain has lost an empire and has not yet found a role”.

I have bought into this debate, my own take being that our inner loss of confidence and identity is directly attributable to the collective denial of our Judeo-Christian religious roots post-WW2.

But two recent incidents have caused me to pause:

On Saturday I went to a celebration of the election of the new Young Mayor of Newham, Joshua Adejokun, chosen recently by a ballot of all 11 to 18 year olds across the borough. It was held at his place of worship, the Cherubim and Seraphim Church in Forest Gate. Joshua is an attractively self-confident young man of 14 with dread-locks who spoke articulately about his election campaign, his family and his faith. The predominantly Nigerian Pentecostal congregation was exuberantly excited about this success for one of their own, and their joy was reflected in the decibel levels.

In the middle of the celebration, three white-clad ‘Soldiers of Salvation’ marched into the church carrying three flags, in pride of place and easily the largest of which was the Union Jack – not the Nigerian national flag or the church denominational banner, but the red, white and blue of the flag of the United Kingdom. It was saluted, elevated, furled and unfurled, paraded and saluted again before being deposited beside the altar at the front of the church.

Such enthusiastic respect for the symbol of British nationhood by an overwhelmingly ethnic-background congregation was unexpected to say the least.

Then on Monday I attended a lunchtime round-table discussion at the Quilliam Foundation, the organisation recently launched by two former Hizb-ut-Tahrir militants (Ed Husain and Maajid Nawaz) to counter the very Islamic extremism that they themselves once espoused. The theme of the seminar was British Muslims in 2009 – Where Next?

One of the speakers was Sabin Malik, a hijab-wearing young Muslim involved in community work and local government, and an adviser to Hazel Blears MP, the Minister for Community and Local Government. Sabin’s enthusiasm for things British was, again, unexpected, and certainly not the sort of sentiment you would hear from your average guilt-ridden self-loathing left-liberal opinion-former that stalks the corridors of Westminster, Whitehall and White City.

Britain is a great nation, she said. She rates the country’s openness, tolerance and democracy and in her view there is no better place for a modern Muslim woman to live. Her enthusiasm for things English like fish and chips, an ‘Indian’ (curry take-away) and the proverbial cup of tea reminded me of John Major and his description of a Britain at ease with itself – “long shadows on cricket grounds, warm beer, dog lovers, pools-fillers and old maids bicycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist”.

It comes to something, I reflected, when it’s people from ethnic-minority backgrounds who show the rest of us how to have confidence in what it is to be British. In modern multi-cultural Britain I thought it was only the excellent Royal British Legion who displayed such flag-waving patriotism and sincere national gratitude in public. It seems I was wrong.

Our minority-background population to show us the way? It appears that they at least know no identity crisis.