I LIKE the England football team, really. What’s not to like?
For me it was the Saturday afternoon walk to the newsagent for an ordered copy of Shoot magazine. Would there be a glossy picture of a Celtic player: Kenny Dalglish maybe or Danny McGrain; these being one of only a handful of Scottish players who ever seemed to get the glossy picture treatment? And if so, the following week it would be Sandy Jardine or Derek Parlane because even in Farringdon Street the editor knew about the balance of these things.
But mainly, it was Kevin Keegan’s column and the Focus on an English First Division player like Mick Mills or Kevin Beattie or – my favourite English player – Malcolm MacDonald. They would get to answer questions about their lives away from football. Favourite Film; best food; favourite actor/actress; what would you like to be if you weren’t a footballer; best friend. And it was usually: True Grit; Scampi and Chips; Clint Eastwood/Sophia Loren (always Sophia Loren, but sometimes Raquel Welch); unemployed; the wife.
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And your lifelong love of English football and England in general had begun, augmented by the English highlights on Saturday night and Bob Wilson on Grandstand who won two caps for Scotland but seemed to be embarrassed by it (I kept waiting for him to mention it but he never did).
And when they reached major tournaments you wanted them to do well after Scotland had been knocked out. You really did because when Kenny left Celtic the Liverpool fans had idolised him and Manchester United seemed to be a Scottish team with one or two English players thrown in. And United too seemed to like the Scots. And your dad would tell you that the two greatest managers of England’s two greatest clubs were Scots and so too were most of their greatest players.
Then, as you got older, little things began to chafe: gently at first. But they soon developed into an ache, mainly around the ears. It became so that you began to expect it; to crave it even. It was the commentators and their analysis. It was all about England. No matter where they were playing; no matter how badly.
No matter how brilliant the other team was they might as well not have turned up. They were only there to bask in England’s glory. Even the foreign players weren’t allowed to be just, well … foreign. It was “the former Middlesbrough player” or someone who’d “spent a year on loan at Crystal Palace”. The message was always clear: they might look sophisticated and elegant in their fancy continental strips but they couldn’t cut it in a real football league.
But you still liked England, especially Wayne Rooney because he just wanted to play and he made you remember why you loved this game. Rooney is the only superstar I’ve ever seen who I believe would have played for Albion Rovers if that’s what he had to do just to play football. I used to love it whenever he was substituted – even if it was the final minute. He was always furious, like you used to be when you got called in by your mum at 8pm to do your homework.
You thought that the commentators and all those former players who became pundits might grow up too and become a little more generous in their recognition of other countries beyond England. But it hasn’t happened. There they all were earlier this week as Italy were advancing serenely and with no little style to the knock-out stages. Played two; won two; scored six; conceded none.
The Italians haven’t conceded a goal in 11 matches and are unbeaten in their last 29. They’ve won four World Cups and reached the final in two more. But they still got treated with contempt by the expert panel supporting a team who last won anything 55 years ago and then only because they were the recipients of outrageous favour throughout the tournament.
“It might be a different story when they’re up against the big boys,” said Ian Wright about Italy. Actually, I can’t remember if it was Ian Wright; but it’s usually him. Sometimes it’s Shearer. That smug-looking, inanimate master of inanity. See what they’ve done to me.
These people are already making it very difficult to like them. I want to be reasonable in anticipation of tonight’s game; to hope we turn up and be competitive and not get our arses felt. And I want a goal. Even if it’s our fate to be beaten just give us a goal, and a meaningful one. Not a consolation tacked on at the end of 3-0. A stranger-hugging; pint-spilling; get it right fuckin up you one.
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And I want to appreciate England, especially Jack Grealish because … what a player. And Marcus Rashford and Harry Kane; all of them seem to have proper values. And because they have a young manager who seems to be everything their presenters and commentators and pundits aren’t: reasonable; measured; respectful; articulate; modest.
But at around 7.30 tonight one of them will say something about the Three Lions or about unifying the entire country or “England expects” or “who do you think will get England’s goals”. And I’ll just want them pumped. And I’ll feel bad about it and it will make me want to drink lots of alcohol to take the edge off it.
Bloody England and bloody Scotland too, because we’re usually equally to blame for being too rubbish to make them take notice.
But just one goal tonight, Scotland, that’s all we ask. And preferably when the game’s still alive.
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