England and Italy
Watching this year’s European Championship final was always likely to be a conflicted affair. As an Englishman, I had not seen the national side reach the final of a major tournament since 1966 when I was still in my first decade of life. There have been — as the ‘Three Lions” song puts it — many “years of hurt” since then. But I am married to an Italian and a confluence of circumstances meant that I was watching this final in my mother-in-law’s living room in Italy.
Complicating this situation further was the quagmire of Brexit which became a messy reality at the start of the year. Newspaper coverage of the England team’s progress to the final had made it abundantly clear that the Conservative government and the generally right-ward leaning press were all too ready to see victory as further vindication of the decision to withdraw from the European Union. Premier Boris Johnson, whose interest and knowledge of football had hitherto been slightly less than zero, was now poised to create a national public holiday to celebrate the team, provided they won. The wine of triumph seemed set to turn to gall in my mouth at the prospect of a happy Boris and his associated xenophobic legions.
And so, after the initial stifled euphoria of England scoring in the opening minutes, I settled into a strained ambivalence, resigned to the arrival of not just an Italian equaliser and the prolonged stale-mate of extra-time, but to the grim inevitability of England’s inability to win a “penalty shoot-out.” (For those who do not follow such matters, England have been involved nine times in this process and have been successful on just two occasions, which may fall into the statistical category of ‘margin of error.’)
Thus, Italy won, and understandably the media here has been full of the team, their success, and the prevailing joy after so much pandemic trauma. In the days that followed I have had to face some gentle teasing from my wife’s friends. One joke, which doesn’t translate too well, went along the lines: How can you find England with a watch? Follow the hand that points to seconds! Another, sent immediately after Italy’s victory, was pithier. It read: ‘Brexit?’
Living in another culture can often sharpen the sense of one’s own ethnic identity. There is even some historical scholarship that argues that Irish and German nationalism, for instance, gathered significant strength in the immigrant communities of mid-nineteenth century America. Even today, there seems to be a slightly rose-tinted view of the homeland in some parts of the Irish diaspora.
So, apart from a petition to make the practising of penalty-taking a key part of the national curriculum, what has this experience taught me?
It invites affirmation of some English stereotypes. Stiff upper lip? Be ready with a quotation from Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If” — mainly the line ‘If you can meet with triumph or disaster, and treat those two impostors just the same.” And of course, “The Dunkirk spirit.” The problem with this is that the reality of boorish behaviour whether of fans booing the opponent’s national anthem, or England players removing their medals as soon as they were presented in a manner that conveyed childish disappointment — combine together to completely contradict the image. Especially since ill manners was the least of it; there have been numerous reports of harassment and assault on foreigners in England during the tournament. Gentility was always a questionable facet of England’s international image, given that dominion, which the nation historically sought almost everywhere, is inherently atavistic.
My chief residual feeling is one of uncomfortable alienation. I am English at a gut level, and yet intellectually what I increasingly see are similarities between people, although not always on the positive side such as spontaneous acts of generosity and kindness which I have seen in both countries. However much the images of fans in London and other cities celebrating made me shake my head at their careless disregard for public safety in the context of the more infectious Delta variant, I still knew that I could find virtually identical images of their Italian counterparts in Rome, Naples and Milan, and the infection rate in Italy has also headed upward.
Televised professional football is very much the most recent “bread and circuses” phenomenon, able to absorb the otherwise suspect energies of the masses. It cannot remedy Italy’s ills nor, despite a lot of media hype, can it offer (via the multi-racial and in some cases politically progressive squad) a model for a new more tolerant England. While my disappointment reminds me that I cannot escape the bonds of cultural identity, it is the depths of my embarrassment that reminds me most emphatically that I am an Englishman. For me, the emotional tangle that is embarrassment lies at the heart of English culture. At this point, it would be ideal if I could simply jump-cut cinema-style to Hugh Grant saying “sorry” since a well-modulated sorry is a very English kind of word. And yes, that last phrase is an Elton John allusion; from the song ‘Sorry seems to be the hardest word’ which includes the line — “it’s sad, so sad; it’s a sad, sad situation, and it’s getting more and more absurd.” This too — the sense of absurdity — is part of the English character I am unlikely to lose anytime soon, so I guess I will draw solace from the fact that it will probably see me through to the next time we face penalties.
