England’s tip at World Cup success oddly emotional
Like most of my generation, I occasionally kicked the round ball in youth. Early school soccer games linger in the memory. The mantra of an old friend, the alma mater’s goalkeeper, has always stayed with me: ‘‘If in doubt, kick it out.’’
Back in 1974, this sounded like philosophy. It still does.
Like myself, the Malfroy Primary School goalie had an English mother. We were both born in 1966, a fateful year for English football. The last – and only – time England won the World Cup.
It’s a rather thin basis for emotional investment. If mother were still around, would she have bothered to rise early Thursday morning to watch England take on the might of Croatia? Probably not.
No matter, when you live across the road from a public house that’s spent three days filling in council forms in triplicate to gain a special licence to open, the least you can do is attend, telling yourself you owe it to your maternal forebears.
At 6am the room was both packed and partisan – English flags worn on sleeves, breast pockets and the odd comely cheek bone.
There was an air of expectation, a touch of confidence and an awful lot of dread. The television commentator references 1966 at a rate of once every 30 seconds. When he’s not talking up the win he’s lamenting the near misses. Apparently 1990 was a close-run thing.
The theme is that of a song from Cabaret. The English fans are one with Liza Minnelli, all but singing Maybe This Time aloud.
I anticipate a war of attrition, something drawn out, defensive and borderline dull. The opposite happens – a free kick within sight of the Croatian goal; an Englishman who can evidently bend it like Beckham. It’s Kieran Trippier’s day. Day Trippier, yeah. And all inside five minutes of kickoff.
The pub crowd goes wild. Well, as wild as you can at 6.05am on a Thursday when there’s still the best part of 85 minutes to go and your team has 52 years worth of choking to live down.
Meanwhile, on the pitch itself, the frottage has begun. There are grown men hugging and kissing and rolling upon the earth, a cross between ancient fertility rites and an episode of Rupaul’s Drag Race.
In earlier, more homophobic times, such spectacles did not endear itself to a New Zealand public reared on the stoicism of real football, the kind which used the word ‘‘rugby’’ as prefix. These days it’s all part of the wider sporting landscape.
Professional sportsmen and sportswomen are expected to grunt and fist-pump, and slap each other on the derrie`re. If they didn’t they would be said to ‘‘lack passion’’.
Determined not to rest on their laurels or to just sit on a 1-0 lead, England do just that.
Polite applause spontaneously breaks out at the end of the first half, but the fans are far from convinced. I catch up with an English friend, a learned, university type. He alludes to decades of disappointment.
I draw comparisons with that inexplicable gap between 1987 and 2011, when somehow New Zealand misplaced another cup. He says that doesn’t even come close.
Croatia are a different team in the second half. They dominate possession and look like scoring several times before they actually do. Their skills at pantomime and diving are also a cut above the English.
My mother’s countrymen sometimes even manage a vestige of composure in the tackle, refraining from milking every single physical encounter with their opponents. On those rare occasions when they are actually fouled, they don’t always whine about it like prissy school girls. Still, they have their share of offenders too. Something to build on for the next tournament.
The English slide into mediocrity has the feeling of a selffulfilling prophecy. Once Croatia equalises there’s no turning back.
After they go a goal up in extratime things turn farcical, with a Croatian player if not actually feigning injury than certainly exaggerating it, lying on the ground, refusing the assistance of several Englishmen. Am I missing a subtle cultural point? Is it permissible in soccer, when ahead, to just have a little bit of a lie down?
A lie down is what most of the dumbstruck fans likely crave as they file out of the pub. I resist the urge to indulge my inner George Gregan. Quips about ‘‘four more years’’ will not lighten this load. Would 40 be enough? Perhaps when 1966 is beyond living memory.