So it didn’t come home. Or maybe it was already here, feet on the living room table, can of cheap lager in its hand, replica shirt stretched across that middle-age spread, and shouting at the TV where Gary Lineker, Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher and a host of others pontificate about ‘the beautiful game’. Perhaps football really is right bang at the centre, almost the beating heart, of our culture. The one connection between blokes in flat-roofed pubs on run down council estates and the great and good who run everything.
And maybe this is a problem for all the people who are in charge? Are they too uncomfortable with the idea that football culture is part of us and that means fat men who drink Carling expressing their red-faced ire at referees as much as it means smooth pundits on telly who like to talk about soft power? The charming pundits with their podcasts really don’t like it do they? To put it mildly, the English media and intellectual elite have something of a love-hate relationship with our national sport.
There are few things that connect the people who, in George Bailey’s words, do most of the living and working round here - the monarchy, our language, the handful of scraps from history everyone recalls, and - yes - football. Even people who don’t enjoy the game get touched by its cultural hegemony. Some respond with a sneer and claim to be watching the big game only out of a sense of irony or claim nothing else to do. Others share the ups and downs with their football supporting friends, appreciating just how important all this stuff is to those friends.
The problem is that the great and good, on seeing the typical English football supporter (or indeed Scottish or Welsh supporter) is confronted, stereotypically, with a caricature of their worst cultural nightmare. Whether it’s Emily Thornberry posting a sneering picture of white van man’s house bedecked with the cross of St George or the Metropolitan Police Commissioner portraying supporters like some sort of uniquely dangerous mob dead set on smashing up London. Westminster Council, as grand and elitist as you get, decided that the prospect of people - football supporters - gathering outside a pub was too much to bear so they banned it everywhere across the borough. ‘Go watch the game at home’ was the message from council and police, ‘if you don’t we might arrest you’.
Football never left. And today English football is firmly entrenched in our identity as a nation. Comedian Francis Foster, tells a joke about Millwall fans (Foster may indeed be one of those fans). Forster’s joke begins with the story of Roy Larner who stepped in front of knife wielding terrorists on London Bridge with the battle cry of “fuck you I’m Millwall”. Larner’s actions undoubtedly saved lives that day and Foster’s joke concludes with Millwall fans being pointed at the enemy: “that’s West Ham over there”. You cannot separate this part of football’s culture from the game on the pitch. Yet for all the pompous statements from politicians and pundits telling us “football is about the fans”, the dreadful English truth is that the great and good would prefer fans to clap politely and perhaps to hesitantly punch the air and shout ‘yes’ when the team scores.
Today, as a spectacle, English football is better and more accessible than it has ever been. The Premier League is the best league in the world and the worldwide impact of the English game (or should it be ‘the game played in England’) is enormous. If you travel to the other side of the world and say ‘Manchester’ or ‘Liverpool’ to almost anyone their response won’t be about slightly dowdy cities in the North of England with a great cultural and economic history. They know these words, these places, simply because of football. Little Thai and Javanese kids kicking a ball around on some rough ground are wearing the shirts of English clubs. Yet here in England our authorities tiptoe uncomfortably around the passion and (mostly contained) violence of football support failing to realise that without the passion, the literal fanaticism, the game is much less.
Lily Allen, public schoolgirl and ‘mockney’ singer, illustrated this conflict by posting an unpleasant stereotype of English football supporters crying into their pints of lager. The stereotype of supporters neatly captured how Britain's elite sees the football fan - as an embarrassment, as sad fat middle aged blokes draped in a flag. Of course this cultural elite will be first in the queue for the feting of winning teams, will delightedly pose with ex-footballers turned pundits, and doubtless exclaim joy at the ‘beautiful game’ while saying the game is nothing without the fans. There just won’t be any actual fans allowed near such expressions of football mythology. English football fans are, to Britain’s elite, like that old piece of doggerel about children, ‘better not seen or heard’.
On a Summer evening when, for the first time in history, England's footballers are playing in the final of an international tournament outside Britain, the authorities in our biggest city effectively closed the streets and told people not to travel into London and to stay home quietly to watch the game. The message of fear, dislike and a sort of snobby disregard for an unique occasion reminds us that, while there’s a shared desire for England to win, there is an elite desire for the occasion to be more like a Wimbledon men’s final than the raucous, bantering, song-singing and shouty fandom of English football. But surely, if the fans make football - as we’re told all the time - then that passionate, beer-filled loudness is part of the game too.
Yes there might be a fight or two. Yes, some people will drink too much. For sure it might mean, once in four years, some disturbance for neighbours. But, damn it, let's do this right next time. As England plays in the World Cup finals, let’s throw a party, allow the fans to sing and shout, drink cheap lager and cheer the football. Some grand folk might not like it but this is the beating heart of our culture, let’s behave like it is.
Same thing over here for American football.