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.”