Jill Rees: Welcome Press

You would think that being out of the European football competition would make the English too upset to watch the tournament, but in fact quite the opposite has happened.

In England there is a brutal nationalism about international football,, stemming mainly from the fact that the team is very weak and demonstrates vividly how we are a very small insignificant nation deep down, and not the great Empire that exists now only in our imagination. Since England won the World Cup in 1966, its only victory, it has unfortunately come to believe that it can win again. This is patently not so. Even most of the players in our Premiership teams are from other countries, sadly ineligible to play for our national team. The English fans however refuse to accept the truth, and become exceedingly belligerent each tournament.

This is not helped by the fact that the UK also includes many Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish fans, whose teams rarely qualify. Since the days of George Best there have been calls for a British team, but the chances of obtaining agreement between these rivalling nations makes this unacceptable to all four nations. Although long since part of the UK, the other nations are patriotic about the Scottish, Welsh and Irish national teams. It is widely believed that the English would just want to get the best players from the other three nations, and make a larger ‘English’ team; for it is the English who have tended in the past to conquer and subsume other cultures, Wales and Ireland as well as the former colonies.

Such is the rivalry between the four British nations that they look very unfavourably at the idea of ‘playing for the English’. In the 1998 World Cup Scotland were knocked out in the early stages. When asked who they would be supporting Scottish fans said ‘Whoever is playing against the English’.

In World Cup competitions of course we are very lucky to have close connections with former British colonies and in the England/Jamaica matches the Scottish fans were out in force…..for Jamaica!

‘Our boys have done well’, they were heard to say. Most of the black population of the UK has its roots in Jamaica and the West Indies, so ‘our boys’ is happily applied to a people that the British are familiar with. Any remnants of racism against Jamaicans was wiped out in the rivalry with the dreaded ‘Sassenach’, an ancient Gaelic or Scottish word for ‘Saxon’ and what they now call those dreadful heathen south of the border.

In ancient times, the British Isles were populated by a mix of peoples now referred to as the ‘Celts’ although only a few were actually Celtic Europeans, many were Picts and other tribes from the east. The Britons themselves, who were there even before the eastern Celtic tribes, originate in North Africa and are closely related to the Berber people of Algeria and Morocco. Since official British History only begins with the Magna Carta, the British are thoroughly unaware of this, and any attempt by Nigerian visitors to explain that the British are really Africans will not go down well, just so you know!

The point is that England did not qualify for this European Championship, and peace reigns in the streets of the UK. The experience of watching the matches has reverted to the calm and happy times, beer in hand, that we remember from the beloved era when we was fab and before the football hooliganism of the eighties. Gentle comments of ‘Well played’, and ‘Good save, son’, are more like cricket than football, and the quiet half pint of bitter goes down better than twelve pints of cheap lager in this atmosphere. The English have become civilised again, and the British are united.

‘Who are you supporting?’ you may ask. Ah, well, therein lies a tale:

My family background is Welsh on my mother’s side and English on my father’s side. As the Welsh go by matriarchy, I am officially Welsh. On the other hand, the English go by patriarchy, which makes me officially English. At heart of course I am Nigerian, but they aren’t playing! Under normal circumstances, therefore, I support the Welsh, on the principal that the English are colonial imperialists, whereas the Welsh never did ‘no harm to nobody’. Wales, however, rarely qualify, although there was almost one glorious moment when we beat Italy 2-0, and we are still living off that victory nearly ten years later!

My parents come from Manchester, and have always supported Manchester United, so I decided to support whoever was first to beat them. This was back in 1968, when they were pretty much unbeatable, having just won the European Cup. Finally A.C. Milan beat them, and I have supported that Italian team ever since. There used to be a fantastic programme on TV called ‘Football Italia’ and British people who were fed up with the bullying and whingeing of the British teams at the time went over to the Italian side, with the grace and footie skills of the Italian players. Women liked watching it as well, for obvious reasons, so it brought couples together, at least until the men realised what was going on. Anyway this all meant that I have been supporting Italy.

This tournament, I find myself in Istanbul in Turkey, and Turkey have turned out to be amazing. They are a tough people, used to dealing with adversity, to taking hard knocks and getting back on their feet again. Twice they have come back from certain defeat to wrest stunning victories. When they win, they shout and toot their car horns, and have now taken to setting off fireworks and shooting guns up to the sky, even at the start of games. Football once again has elevated the hope of this split nation, half in half out of Europe, divided from Asia by the Bosphoros channel, which I spend my leisure time sailing across in a ferry boat saying,

‘Now I’m in Europe; Now I’m in Asia’.

Win or lose in the football, it’s only a game! And at the very least, Turkey have won the respect and admiration of those English fans now supporting their team, which may aid their desire to become accepted as a member of the European Union. After all, it is the European Championship.

1070 words

© Jill Rees

22 June 2008

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Tags: English national team, European Championship, football