As I write, England are playing Panama and making hard work of it. Coincidentally, I am on the home stretch of Zadie Smith’s Dead and Alive, in which the Essay, The Realm of the Unspoken engages with being a supporter of the England Men’s National Team at a previous World Cup within the context of an increasingly fraught conversation around belonging, patroitism and flag waving. Flags at protests, painted at roundabouts and hung from homes and lamposts were, and continue to be, a particularly sore point.
Now as with then, the line-up is peppered with the fruits of Empire: Ghana, Barbados, Nigeria, Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis, Cote d’Ivoire, Angola being represented as are Ireland and Scotland from the rest of the UK.
England were doing very well at that World Cup, eventually bowing out at the Quarter-finals. Whilst the going was good, it was very much a We, willing football to come home. The fallout of the defeat to France was much more othered. Now as with then, one hopes they do well (any one but England leanings aside). One however fears though that if/when the road ends, it will be in a hail of dodgy tweets and abuse, much more about the other than We.
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