England Awaits

My wife and I were visiting Ireland, Scotland and England in early June, a holiday blending a wedding, sightseeing, and visiting old friends. Gripped with World Cup fever, I was glad to be back in the British Isles at World Cup time for the first time since 1986. As England were the only country in the islands to qualify, I was interested in seeing how the team was viewed in all three countries. A Scottish girl provided the best insight as to how the Scots looked at their Auld Enemy to the south.

The scene was an Edinburgh souvenir shop, the day before the World Cup was to begin. The girl behind the counter asked me where we were heading next on our vacation, and I told her we were driving down to England in time to see the England-USA game with old friends. "Arrgh," she said in a solid Edinburgh accent, "I HATE ENGLAND! I'll be painting a star-spangled banner on my face!" She seemed deadly serious.

If there's one nation that stokes the most interest of neutrals at the World Cup, it is surely England. As the undoubted inventors and exporters of the world's most popular sport, the English national team is the second favorite of many fans throughout the world. The Premier League is broadcast across the globe, and is viewed with reverence no matter what the quality of football. However, England also shoulders a rather unique burden at every major tournament in which it participates. Supported with a passion possibly unrivalled in the international game, the England team also faces the derision of a plethora of fans who wish for nothing more that their humiliating demise.


The Irish and the Scots, who didn't qualify for the World Cup, but certainly do qualify for the title of CEB (Certified English Bashers) would be first and second on our travel fixture list. Our first stop was Ballycastle, County Antrim, and it was here that we realized it was the French, not the English, who were targets of Irish venom. Thierry Henry's blatant handball last November in Paris knocked Ireland out of the World Cup in the cruelest fashion, and the Irish haven't forgotten. As I sat in a pub and ate my first Irish breakfast, I stared at a green tee-shirt on the wall that proclaimed "ANYONE BUT THE FRENCH." Presumably even a triumphant English team would be more palatable to the Irish than Henry's cheating getting its ultimate reward. At a family wedding in Galway, there was a marked ambivalence towards the old enemy across the Irish Sea. Most of those I asked were wishing the English at least lukewarm luck, although a cousin of mine did say that England winning the World Cup would be "a little too much!" Maybe it's the overall improved economy, maybe the success Ireland's national sporting teams have had in recent years, but it was nice to see a more friendly attitude towards England than might have been the case in years past.

As a certain girl in Edinburgh might attest, no such warmth existed in Scotland. Crossing the border into England the day the tournament began in South Africa, there emerged a sense of national pride, blind optimism, and finally realism. York was adorned with flags of St. George...sticking out of seemingly every car and house in town. Singing in pubs had already begun two days before the showdown with the United States, as England prepared again to be Champions of the World. In Coventry the next day, the flags were there, but my old friends were harboring some sobering opinions of this England team's quality. Would Heskey be in the Spanish squad? Do England have a goalkeeper? What if Rooney isn't fit? The answers were not comfortable ones, and my old pal Andy predicted the opener would end 1-1. He was exactly right, a disappointing England performance summed up by Rob Green in goal, fumbling a weak shot over his goal-line to give the Americans a deserved point. For those who were watching with me, there didn't seem to be any surprise that England were already struggling.

Six days later, an even more insipid performance resulted in a scoreless stalemate with Algeria, considered by some the weakest side in the competition. England were booed off the park by their own fans, and the feeling was that another ninety minutes against the Algerians still wouldn't have produced a goal. With a nation now consumed with the dreaded possibility of not making it out of a relatively weak group, anything other than victory against Slovenia will send England crashing out of the World Cup. The singing, hand-wringing, and intensity will be racheted up, as the hopes of a nation hang on ninety minutes of football.

For the English, it could be one of its greatest World Cup disasters...or a glorious victory that could spur them on to win the title. In England the flags will be out, the chants will be louder then ever, and the belief will be total. And somewhere in Scotland, a girl with green and white face paint might be learning the Slovenian national anthem.