I love that the Football Association is still trying to make The Official Whatnot of the England team a thing. By Appointment to Their Majesties’ The Three Lions: if not the gold standard, then certainly the pyrite standard of retail.
Latest to join the roster of people keen to be associated with this timeless brand is the German-owned Lidl, which was announced on Monday as the The Official Supermarket of the England Team. Clearly, this is a big win for the Three Lions – who typically play like they’ve been tracked for 40 hours by three Minnesotan dentists – but it does raise a couple of questions. Namely: did you fight in two world wars so a German firm could become the official supermarket of the England football team? Come to that, did you fight in two world wars?
If you answered yes to either of these inquiries, the FA would love to hear from you, probably with a view to using you in some kind of weirdly militarised Cup semi-final warm-up.
As for what The Official Supermarket of the England Team entails, I’m afraid I may have to manage your expectations. By rights, somewhere near Wembley Stadium there would be a Lidl you could walk into and find the entire England squad posed in a tableau vivant of grocery shopping. There’s newcomer Dele Alli over by the fish counter. There’s Michael Carrick being tempted by a BOGOF on festive fizz. There’s Wayne Rooney browsing its award winning range of gourmet French imports, and – oh do look! – there’s twinkly eyed Roy Hodgson holding a gently admonishing finger aloft. Why not try something from the healthier options line, Wayne?
Whichever way you slice it, though, the Lidl tie-in must not be deemed another win for the sports-diabetes complex, in the mould of McDonald’s, Coca-Cola and various other covert agents of Big Obesity sponsoring major sporting entities. First, because England is not a major sporting entity. And second, because the details of Lidl’s multimillion-pound grassroots deal with the FA clearly state that the supermarket will officially supply the England team with water, fish, fruit and vegetables. Thanking you, Lidl. But would you mind checking the stockroom and seeing if you’ve got any more midfielders back there?
For your records, England’s other partners include Vauxhall – presumably the official car – William Hill (the official bookies), Mars (the official comfort food), and Nike (the official cobblers, or some-such cobblers). You know, they remind me a lot of Mariah Carey when she was living in her gilded cage – possibly literally – during her marriage to Tommy Mottola. She had it all, but she just wanted her freedom, just like England have all the Vauxhalls and chocolate bars and cod you could wish for, but mostly crave even 23 seconds of continuous possession.
I must stress that this is not the official line. Indeed, for those who work at the FA, there has almost never been a better time to be alive. The FA chief executive, Martin Glenn, announced the Lidl deal with the statement: “Lidl has joined us at an exciting time.” This striking temporal dislocation suggests that the FA’s long-term plan for success is for England to retreat into an alternative universe of thrilling brand tie-ins – not quite a land of milk and honey, but certainly a land of Carlsberg and bounteous fruit and veg. This is a place where it is always an exciting time – a place that demotes the on-pitch performance of England to a sort of infrequently mentioned Bizarro world.
The sooner we move to this more manageable situation, the better. In the meantime, all that remains is to warn the FA of the potential collapse of two major footballing plotlines into each other with this Lidl deal – namely, the eternal England psychodrama, and the annual poppy row. If you thought the latter had been laid respectfully to rest with full honours at midnight on 11 November, then consider its potential to be equally respectfully exhumed.
Almost every year, there is a story about one or other of the foreign-owned supermarkets banning poppy selling, with this year’s incarnation involving a full-blown picket outside a Belfast Lidl. Unlike the Scottish and Welsh FAs, their Northern Ireland counterpart has not joined the FA in this Lidl deal, but the other home nations are cordially reminded that this row has previously flared up in all their locales, and they must make it an absolute priority to avoid any embarrassing incidents next year. The duties of an official supermarket demand nothing less.
Self congratulation strikes jarring note
A sense of decorum ought not to be self-certifying. Yet in the buildup to Tuesday’s profoundly poignant friendly against France at Wembley, you may have detected a familiar, somewhat distasteful sense of self-regard in some quarters. Slipping into rather too many pre-match reports about hosting duties for this uniquely sensitive tie – and the coverage of the event itself – came the sledgehammer suggestion that we’re so good at this sort of thing.
Defiant Albion, the perfect hosts in the circumstances, didn’t the England camp strike the right tone, well done Wembley. No one does this sort of thing as well as us. One almost got the feeling that if there were a World Cup of This Sort of Thing, we’d definitely win it.
And yet, is it really for the English to lavish quite so many words pointing this out about themselves? A true gentleman – and indeed a true lady, such as Britannia – would surely believe these observations to be entirely the preserve of others (as some very gracious French commentators and players made it). Alas, for some, nothing says “we stand with you, France” like feeling the need to bang on about how faultlessly we do it.
