The last time I went to watch England play as a fan at the old Wembley was a 0-0 draw against Bulgaria 17 years ago this week. It was a gruelling occasion, an entire 90 minutes during which somehow the ball always seemed to be at the feet of Sol Campbell, trapped under his great muscular hooves as he shuttled repeatedly from side to side with the finesse of a primitive stone giant brought to life and very diligently and dutifully learning to tap dance.
All the way through the air was thick with boos and jeers and howls of rage. In front of me one man in particular, a terrifying old-school skinhead with a huge bulbous rippling forehead like a medicine ball made of Spam kept turning around and yelling: “CAM ON!!! SING!!!” Towards the end he leapt up on the railing and started actually conducting the entire stand with a mixture of threats, shaken fists and, much weirder, patiently encouraging gestures. He succeeded too, dragging out of us a few frightened rounds of Enger-land-Enger-land while he sneered and cajoled, scanning the crowd for dissenters, pulse throbbing, like a vast angry, violent Simon Rattle.
It was interesting to compare this reign of patriotic terror with the atmosphere inside the new Wembley for the game against Switzerland last month. It wasn’t really mentioned at the time but the oddest part of Wayne Rooney passing the England goals record was the reaction of the crowd, who chanted “Rooney!” a few times, raised their devices for a commemorative selfie and then abruptly started to leave, hundreds of people streaming out through the exits, moment of history safely consumed, with eight minutes of competitive England football still to run. My thoughts, at that moment, were naturally with the giant Spam-coloured skinhead. I can only hope, for his own sake, he’s been priced out of coming by now.
The idea of supporting your country as a given, an unconditional love supreme, has been simmering away in the background this week. Before England’s Rugby World Cup game against Australia some of the players have felt undermined by criticism from pundits. This has been portrayed, not explicitly, as disruptive, at worst a kind of disloyalty. Good old Prince Harry, bunching his fists, wrenching his great pink neck around, has “called on the entire nation to back England”, which is the right sentiment but still seems like one of those things where, you know, if you have to say it, well ... Meanwhile another England football squad has been announced, hovering vaguely on the edge of things like a voice heard through the wall.
There will of course always be an England support. People like getting out and about. They like songs. But it must be said, something has shifted. Even as someone who grew up supporting England quite desperately at football and cricket it is hard now to feel that instant twitch on the thread. England as a sporting thing, a shared, non-negotiable passion is if not over then oddly diminished. Wipe away the crumbling St George’s Cross face paint. Remove that red and white jester’s hat. Put out fewer flags.
This is not about England being bad at sport. The fact is the fortunes of our national teams have remained more or less constant over the last 40 years. Nor is it measured in ticket sales or merchandise haul, which have never been so successfully hawked. It is just there in the tone and texture of the occasion. Young people, in particular, seem to look at national teams and shrug, before turning back to the borderless world of star names and star teams, a digital fandom in which, quite frankly, the old St George’s Cross looks a little analogue, a little fax machine.
There will be some who say: it’s your country. Just support it. Typical pigeon-chested, sneering urban Guardianista weasel. To which I say, well, when you put it like that England looks like my kind of town. Bring on the sneering urban weasels. Finally a team I can really get behind. And really such certainty is in itself quite un-English. To be English is to feel doubt and ambivalence, to object, cock a snook, take for granted, deride the flag even is it cossets you in its safe embrace, to feel sentimentally dispossessed.
There is, though, something more to the current drift. Tub-thumping aside, international sport has traditionally been the most interesting kind of sport. In its pure form it is a test of systems, a measure of everything a society puts into its active life. Schools, clubs, municipal spaces, teachers, coaches, parents, football associations, effort, attitude, resources. Are we doing it right? Or are they?
It is decade now since the last golden age of England teams, that three-year run of 2003 Rugby World Cup winners, Euro 2004 and the 2005 Ashes series. It isn’t hard to see why these teams were captivating. The 2003 rugby champions were, for all their disciplined style, crammed with quietly seething characters from the austere, garden-shed genius of Jonny Wilkinson, to the basic overpowering Johnno-ness of Martin Johnson, the kind of man whose sheer presence makes other men want to weep and hug and grip each other tenderly by the shoulder.
Similarly the 2005 Ashes winners were the last really homemade-feeling England cricket team. Steve Harmison, a fast bowler who appeared to have been stapled together out of old deckchair parts, sill looked like the kind of bloke you might have been to primary school with, or been terrorised by once in some club cricket net. Andrew Flintoff, Marcus Trescothick: these were great talents with something in their method and manner that still felt like a product of the wider cottage industry of clubs and schools. The fact is, however you look at it, the individual’s personal connection to professional sport, the shared aspects, are much smaller. There has been a general outsourcing, a rise in influence of professional clubs and PLC-shaped governing bodies, and as a result a commodification at every level from participation to support.
Our best teams no longer represent the top end of an experience shared by most of the population. Instead sport has been muscled into a profitable corner, transformed into a business of elite participation and passive consumption. In football in particular the best players are co-opted at the youngest possible age, wrapped up in club colours and inducted into the wider supporting industry of academies and development squads, butterflies on the wheel, kit-billboards, the churn that keeps the system turning.
For those on the inside there will be the same professional pride at producing out of a mess of untutored humanity a successful sporting team. For those outside … well, remind me, what am I supposed to love here? What message would it send, for example, if Premier League-era England were to win the World Cup? Neglect your young players. Buy in, don’t produce. Neglect grassroots sport. You too can win the World Cup. Am I really meant to want this glorious farrago of corporate greed to beat, say, Iceland?
In the middle of this the English public remains commendably dutiful, not to mention very, very good at buying tickets and turning up to things. Wembley may be lukewarm these days, the Champions League crowds jarringly hollow compared to many overseas. But still we keep coming. And really it wouldn’t take much to reignite the flame. Twickenham will be full and furiously noisy on Saturday. A little passion, a sense of connection, a rolling back of the bonds. This is all we ask. Cam on. Stand up. Sing. While we still remember.
