Some time back in 2019, a local Dutch guy in a bar in Scheveningen shook my hand and said: ‘Don’t worry. You’re Brits. It will be alright. The friendships are too strong to be broken by idiot politicians.’ I think he hugged me. And I knew that he was right.
Back in the mid 1980s, I also dimly remember the regular shame of reading the Monday papers in the football season, and finding out whose unfortunate supporters ours had beaten the crap out of over the weekend.
How things change. Tomorrow evening, a team that I am totally proud of under a manager who encapsulates just about everything I like about my country, will play in a final that they have been trying to get to for 55 years. It’s magical, and I just wish I felt better about it. I wish I had woken up with the joy it was supposed to bring.
Don’t get me wrong. These are two wonderful teams who should produce a cracking game in which we are lucky enough to have home advantage. I know nothing about the subtleties of football, but I have watched every game we’ve been involved in, and have loved the helter-skelter ride of emotions that they have served up. Alone or in company, I will watch and cheer every minute tomorrow evening. I would love us to win, and to do so in 90 minutes with a two goal margin. The country needs a bit of joy. Heck, we all need a bit of joy. And if Gareth Southgate, Harry Kane and Raheem Sterling are the ones to deliver it, I can think of none better.
So what’s the problem?
Boris, in a word. I’m not about to be political. I don’t care if I have a Tory, Labour, Liberal or Green government so long as it is half competent, as fair as it can be and mostly decent. No, this is human.
Leaders don’t just set the tone, they actually give permission to us all of how to be. Those people who broke into Congress back in January had spent four years learning how to articulate their unhappiness and hate in a way that would startle, discomfort and frighten the people around them. The agri-businesses chucking indigenous people out of their Amazon homes have been beamed on by Bolsanaro.
And you can’t help but think that the way our Prime Minister is, and acts, and lies, and dresses, and wheedles, and postures, and evades, and blusters, and bullies, has sort of told the rest of us that it’s OK to do the same. I mean, did we really need the overseas aid budget more than an abused woman in South Sudan did? I mean, really? Do we actually need to hold European citizens in processing centres? Apart from anything, and I wouldn’t have thought it possible, after fifty years of progress, he has managed to make foreigners foreign again.
So would someone fire a laser into a goalie’s eyes under a different prime minister? Of course they might. Would a section of the crowds boo the opposition’s national anthem? Quite possibly. But has there ever been a game in our history when an entire continent wants us to lose? You might think it is the fact of Brexit that has caused this, but I don’t buy it. It is the manner of it. They just think that we are run by a bunch of cheating tossers, and they want us to get a bloody nose.
Personally, I think Gareth Southgate deserves better. We all do, actually.
Right now, the bloke in that Dutch bar is some way from being right.
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