Michael Clifford: Are you supporting our neighbours tonight?
England fans celebrate their side's 2-1 semi-final win against Denmark at Wembley Stadium on Wednesday. Picture: AP /Carl Recine
That should have been the case for the current Euro 2020. The quality on display, allied to the early stage of evolution of the current Irish team, means it may have turned a little ugly if the Republic was in attendance.
Will you be cheering for our near neighbours tonight, with whom we have deep cultural and personal ties? Or will you be Italian for a day, hoping against hope that Old Blighty gets her comeuppance once more?
The usual case for the prosecution of English sporting success has been trotted out in recent days. They will be unbearable. We will never hear the end of it. They will think the empire has been resurrected. Their national psyche will not allow them to accept success with appropriate humility.
Really? Isn't that just a narrow view of Englishness? Sure, the Tory press twirl their jingoistic rattle frequently, but they don’t reflect the majority strain of the national character.
Take, for instance, the most prominent media personality in the game in the UK, Gary Lineker. He has shown himself to personify the best of Englishness, even away from the game, where he constantly heckles Brexiteers and the excesses of English nationalism.
Would we handle success any better, particularly through the media? Or would we succumb to the superiority inferiority complex in which the country would congratulate itself in being so measured in congratulating itself?
Exhibit A for the prosecution these days is the song ‘Three Lions’, with the lyrics ‘Football’s coming home’, interpreted here as an arrogant jingle claiming ownership of the game.
Well, the song was written by David Baddiel and Frank Skinner, football nuts who are as far from jingoism as it’s possible to get. The game was invented in England and the song could well be heard as a plaintive cry from generations of fans who have never known national success.
England has, through its history, been in one major final, and lifted a single trophy, and that was back in 1966. Since giving the world the game, they have been the perennial underachievers. And now the Promised Land is visible on the horizon. Arrogance or plain old expectations of a little joy?
In my direct experience, garnered from working in London for a few years in the late '80s, tolerance is the most prevalent national characteristic.
At the time, bombs were going off indiscriminately in British cities in the name of Irish nationalism but I didn’t experience any ill feeling from natives of the host nation. That experience may not be universal, but one wonders how tolerant this country would have exhibited had roles been reversed.
There is a complicating factor this time around with Brexit. That project was to be the greatest extent an exercise in English nationalism. The ostensible premise for Brexit was that the UK felt constrained within the EU and wanted the right to spread its wings and make the most of British exceptionalism. That was, to use a delightfully English phrase, balderdash.
Now, in the first major soccer tournament since Brexit was enacted there is the prospect of the English being crowned kings of European soccer.
History inevitably gets trotted out on sporting occasions like this, the 800 years and all that. But our own history, in this country since independence, in how minorities were treated is hardly anything to be writing home about. Surely it’s time to put that one in context and to bed when it comes to sport.
Finally, there is no getting away from the Big Kahuna effect. England is the biggest, most populous, well resourced country in these islands and those that orbit it – such as Wales, Scotland and the two jurisdictions on this island – will instinctively have a little homespun bias against them.
Perhaps it might be time to give all that stuff a wide berth and display a little generosity in this sphere for a change.
The current English team and the wider set- up appears to sum up the best of the national characteristics.
The manager, Gareth Southgate, displays admirable qualities and values which he has imparted to his players.
In terms of make-up, a recent report pointed out that all but three of the current English team have at least one grandparent who was an immigrant to the country. Among them are four – Harry Kane, Harry Maguire, Jack Grealish and Declan Rice – who could be playing for the senior Irish team.
The latter two actually played for the Republic at underage. If England had been any other country, it would have by now been adopted as some class of a de facto Irish team.
Even the Big Kahuna effect could be negotiated on this occasion. We have experience of a similar dilemma internally in the code of Gaelic football.
Here the Big Kahuna is Dublin and for decades until 2011, the county was the perennial underachiever whose overarching characteristic was a misplaced swagger.
Eventually, they got their act together, got rid of the swagger and adopted outstanding values, on and off the pitch. The result for the last decade has been huge success which, for those of us who come from beyond the Pale, has been cushioned by the reality that the county’s representatives conduct themselves in an exemplary manner.
Who is to say that England couldn’t or wouldn’t do the same under Garth Southgate? After 55 years and only one trophy since the international game was first established over a century ago, surely they are entitled to a break.
Not that you’d want to see them become a world power and dominate the game for years to come. That would call for a complete reassessment of any spirit of generosity. But, sin scéal eile.
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