The grey drizzle over Manchester city centre reflected the subdued mood of many England supporters making their way into work on Monday morning. While many schools and workplaces had allowed for a later start after Sunday’s Euro 2020 final, others, such as construction sites, stuck to business as usual.
Sam Shaw, a 16-year-old building apprentice from Oldham, was up early and on site despite feeling “devastated”. So too was Sean Stewart, a site fitter, who began work at 7.30am and was one of the few among his colleagues not nursing a hangover. “I’m the best-looking out of everyone on that site,” the 29-year-old from Blackburn joked.
Stewart was trying to reflect on the positives of the tournament, having lost friends to suicide during the pandemic. “What we’ve been through for the past year and a half, with Covid and lockdown, I think it’s brought everyone together again a little bit. You know, every cloud’s got a silver lining,” he said.
While Stewart had notes on Gareth Southgate’s tactics (“We could have done a lot better if we didn’t make the changes so late”) and the refereeing decisions (“a different referee would have had a huge impact”), and condemnation for those directing racist abuse at Marcus Rashford, Jadon Sancho and Bukayo Saka (“small-minded people” who were “1% of a nation of football fans and give us a bad reputation”), he said he felt nothing but pride in the players. “It’s not easy to get to a final, and the boys have proved it.”
Referring to Saka, who took England’s last, unsuccessful penalty, Stewart said: “He had the weight of the nation on his shoulders. At 19, that’s a lot of responsibility.”
Hours after the match concluded, a mural honouring Rashford in Withington, south Manchester, was defaced. Many passersby on Monday morning were disgusted, and one woman who did not want to give her name arrived with hearts to stick over the damage.
“I just find [the racism] really upsetting and really depressing,” said Cathy Wilkins, a social worker waiting for a tram. “Especially toward Marcus Rashford, who is from Manchester and is an amazing young man who we should be incredibly proud of. It’s a disgrace, but I am very proud of [the players].”
Pippa Campbell, 34, hurrying to her job as a theatre manager, said: “It shouldn’t matter that they’re young and they were playing for their country, it’s not right for anyone [to be racially abused]. There’s so much over the last few weeks around this tournament that has made me proud of the country, especially in the way the England football team have conducted themselves, and [the abuse] has the opposite effect.”
Michal Rasul, 21, a student heading into Manchester Central Library, felt similarly. “It just breaks my heart,” she said. “The majority are devastated, but the few people that are overreacting, they just ruin everything. The amount of littering and just abuse going around, it’s ridiculous. A very petty reaction.”
By early evening several people had added notes and decorated England flags at the site, professing solidarity with Rashford as well as his teammates Sancho and Saka.
One note, addressed simply to “Marcus”, was from a woman who, despite growing up in England, wrote that she hadn’t felt there was a place for her in the football world until this year. “I was so proud to see players like yourself, Saka, Sterling and Sancho, representing the true diversity that exists in England,” it read. “You are an absolute star - Amita.”
Adding his poster alongside a note that said, “Thank you for feeding the kids” was Ibou Dia, 19, a student. “I think it’s important to show [Rashford] that he’s an inspiration, especially to me as a young, mixed-race guy, and for young people and the whole country really,” he said. “We shouldn’t let these few people take that away from him, because he gives so much more to all of us that they’ll never really understand.”
Rosie Wallbank, 37, a local resident who had come along with her mother to remind them both that “there was lots of good in the world”. “That’s the bigger, more powerful thing that’s happening, not the stuff that you hear about,” she said. “That’s the minority and I think it’s important that people don’t feel alone.”
A crowdfunder Withington Walls, who maintain the mural and others locally, has raised more than £18,000. In a statement posted on Monday evening, Rashford said the response in Withington had him “on the verge of tears”.
“The communities that wrapped their arms around me continue to hold me up,” he said.
— Marcus Rashford MBE (@MarcusRashford) July 12, 2021
The Oast House, a bar in Manchester’s Spinningfields, showed the match on a giant outdoor screen to 300 customers, but thousands more gathered on the steps of Manchester crown court to try to watch it through the fence. “Pretty hectic” was how Danny Leach, the general manager of the bar, described it. Leach finished work at 1am and was back hours later to finish the cleanup job and prepare to reopen.
Tickets for a table of six to watch the final sold out in seconds, with around 130,000 people attempting to buy one, but the Oast House kept one table back to sell online to raise funds for a local domestic abuse charity, knowing that violence can surge after football matches. Alongside donations, it raised £2,200 for the Salford Survivor Project.
Leach said the players who took the penalties would be “greeted with a heroes’ welcome just for getting to the final for the first time for 55 years”. The result was disappointing, but the better team won in the end, he added.
“We worked hard,” said Francesco Erra, a hairstylist from the Amalfi coast who works at Azzurri, an Italian barbershop in Manchester. After a night of celebration, Erra could not complain that about 20 customers – English and Italian – had cancelled bookings that morning.
He was “really happy” that Italy had won, but also pleased that England made it to the final after “such a long time”, and he had no fears of a negative reaction from England fans. “We’re proud of the Mancunian people and they’re proud of us too,” he said.
