Comparative happiness is immoral. I’m not about to take pleasure in the fact that England currently suffers with some dreadful politicians stoking fear of immigrants and other perceived grievances. Besides, that sort of thing is abundantly available right here at home.
On the contrary, I am a bit jealous of how the English were afforded a temporary, euphoric respite from anti-social turmoil by the World Cup and their national team’s delightful run in the tournament.
It was just soccer and, in the end, the English lads didn’t necessarily reverse a self-deprecating “narrative of decline” described by Rebecca Mead in The New Yorker, that it’s been “all downhill since the end of the Second World War, or the end of the Empire, or 1066…”
Or the Brexit chaos that reportedly has Prime Minister Theresa May facing the possible collapse of her government. But by changing the subject—“Don’t You Know There’s a Bloody Game On?” the Sun newspaper headlined amid bad bureaucratic developments—the soccer team unleashed a unifying giddiness in pushing to the Cup semifinals for the first time since 1990.
From my perch in New York, and with the United States having failed to qualify for the first time since 1986, I allowed myself multiple, shifting allegiances from the start of the tournament. Spain, for its buzzing, precise passing and teamwork. Portugal, just to watch Cristiano Renaldo’s out-of-the-blue strikes. Argentina, in anticipation of Lionel Messi’s magic. Mexico, because our neighbors to the South deserve a break. Brazil, because Brazilian soccer is true performance art. Panama, because a tiny country making its World Cup debut is a beautiful thing, however it fares. France, based on a family ancestry going back many generations, and with the discovery of France’s wondrous teenager Kylian Mbappe.
The whole thing, even without a home team to follow, was a welcome escape from the daily—hourly—assault of depressing national and international news, an uplifting antidote to spreading xenophobia.
By the end of group play, I was all aboard the English bandwagon. Marveling at goalie Jordan Pickford’s lightning reactions. Raheem Sterling’s downfield sprints. Harry Maguire’s precise headers. Manager Gareth Southgate’s formal attire (a vest?). Harry Kane’s relentlessly unmussed hair in spite of his diving, lurching, rumbling charges toward goal—not to mention his role as the target of repeated fouls. (“A friend,” reported my daughter, who now lives in London, “called him ‘the most English person possible.’”)
Even England’s excruciating extra-time loss to Croatia in the semifinals couldn’t break the celebratory fever. The soccer anthem “Three Lions,” with its bullish chorus originally written when England hosted the 1996 European Championships, was revived with a vengeance:
It’s coming home/It’s coming home/It’s coming/Football’s coming home.
Because England invented soccer, the natives nurture an assumed superiority regarding the sport—but offset by the contained melancholy of knowing their side has won the World Cup only once, in 1966. And, since then, repeatedly has endured the cruelest of losses in major international tournaments, six times beaten in penalty shootouts, beginning with the 1990 World Cup semis.
A sidebar: I covered that shootout loss for Newsday, in Turin, Italy. The English manager then was Bobby Robson, who gamely declared that he and his team had “to put on a bright smile and accept it. There’s nothing you can do about it.” The English had played the Germans to a 1-1 tie through 90 exhausting minutes of regulation, plus 30 of extra time, only to lose the sport’s version of a game of H-O-R-S-E. Or something akin to taking turns throwing a football through a tire.
Of course it was noted then that the Germans had been England’s victims in the ’66 final, and that called to mind the English sportswriter who is said to have written, on the eve of the ’66 title match, a wickedly clever reference to matters beyond soccer:
“Fret not, boys, if on the morrow we should lose to the Germans at our national game, for twice this century we have defeated them at theirs.”
But, as I say, comparative happiness is immoral. And this World Cup did a good job of sidelining political stuff and cultural differences. While the English jauntily sang their “Three Lions” song (the title referencing the team’s official shield with national roots dating to the 12th Century):
Three lions on a shirt/Jules Rimet still gleaming/Thirty years of hurt/never stopped me dreaming. (Jules Rimet was the longtime soccer official after whom the World Cup trophy is named.)
It’s coming home/It’s coming home/It’s coming/Football’s coming home.
After England eliminated Sweden in the quarterfinals, my daughter texted that “People are driving around honking horns and singing out of windows….I just saw a young white kid on a bike yell, ‘It’s coming home’ and high-five two old black guys sitting on a bench as they yelled it back to him….Everyone here is talking about weather (in a good way) and the World Cup. It’s a lovely change in atmosphere.”
We could use some of that here in the Colonies.