England At Play

What did I do on my holidays?

Sponged off mates with better tickets.

First to Frankfurt for England v Denmark in EURO 2024.

Arriving three hours before kick-off supporters weren’t segregated so we mingled and enjoyed a couple of beers before finding our seats and watching ‘the early kick-off’ on the stadium screens. After Serbia equalised against Slovenia with the last play I went back down to the concourse to buy two glasses of wine. Well I tried. At the foot of the stairwell an impenetrable mass of England fans had materialised bellowing an endless chorus…

Can’t start a fire, can’t start a fire without a spark

Phil Foden’s on fire, gonna play the Germans off the park.

Sadly Phil Foden would not be on fire, and there would be no opportunity to play Germany on or off the park. Short term, however, my concern was how to penetrate the swaying wall of England supporters ten to fifteen deep, pints aloft being showered over any would-be passers-by like me. Mostly good natured, with only the occasional dead-eyed stare...

Not wearing your shirt mate? Not singing?

(Not paranoid - informed. I have met some of these people before.)

Eventually I made my way way through only to discover that at every drink kiosk as far as you could see there was a thirty-metre queue.

No wine then. Just need to get back to my seat now…

What’s your problem mate?

After 18 minutes Harry Kane scored; plastic cups and beer (I think it was beer) rained down and I’m caught in a sweaty embrace with my new best friend - a bare chested England supporter I’d never met - dancing an involuntary jig in an inch deep puddle of whatever it was.

Apart from Harry Kane England then stopped playing. Driving into space England’s left-back should have been occupying, England’s captain unleashed a suicidal, blind cross-field ‘clearance’ which, played by any child of mine in an Under 12 contest, would have prefaced a silent journey home. At the Waldstadion the grateful recipient of the ball smacked it past England’s goalkeeper. 1-1.

After that England’s football became unwatchable so I distracted myself playing a game with the names on the supporters’ replica shirts. Rooney. Shearer. Gerrard and Lampard (not together obviously). All ok so far – no sign of the name I am hoping to avoid. And look – Crouch! Brilliant. Who didn’t love ‘Crouchie’? (Ok he played for my team but given how many teams he played for he probably played for your team too.)

As England’s play continued to deteriorate, I started to think that in the game in my head I might be about to pull off a shock result. Until… DAMN!! With the match almost over there it was. The shirt I was hoping not to see. BECKHAM 7. Typical. No Scholes but Beckham. Football never doesn’t let you down.

(What’s wrong with David Beckham? Nothing. He was a good footballer. But despite the media’s ‘Goldenballs’ drivel not a great one and I would have enjoyed telling myself my survey showed that fans understood that his Galactico status reflected his promotional rather than his footballing skills.)

After the game the England manager Gareth Southgate stepped up and said that he was responsible for the appalling performance. Until a few people agreed with him.

Thanks to some other friends a month later we are at the Garsington Opera – a version of Glyndebourne held in the grounds of the Getty estate in Buckinghamshire.

At least the staring at the football was infrequent – an occasional nutter eyeballing you. At the opera it was incessant; everyone eyeing up everyone. Are you famous? Do I know you? Shall I speak to you?

All the iterations of which flicker across people’s faces in fractions of a second but take even less time to read.

Prompting a memory of W.S. Gilbert’s ‘The Gondoliers’.

When everyone is somebody, then no-one’s anybody.

A line the author Ben Macintyre (consciously or unconsciously) surely had in mind when he wrote of an Eton headmaster - in one of my favourite ever sentences - ‘Sir Claude knew everybody who was anybody and nobody who wasn’t somebody.’ (‘A Spy Among Friends’.)

So would you rather hang out with people who think they are somebodies or know they are nobodies?

It turns out the Marriage of Figaro and England football team are both full of bad jokes Kieran Trippier playing left back and improbable storylines we’d be great if we had Kalvin Phillips. (A player available for selection but playing so poorly no-one had suggested he should be in the squad.)

But Mozart gets lucky. At the opera there’s always a gentleman a couple of sizes larger than his dinner jacket who will manufacture a laugh to let the rest of us know that he’s spotted a joke even though è in Italiano. (Yes there are sub-titles but you’re not suggesting he’s looking at those I hope?)

At the football no-one laughs.

Also, whilst his librettist may let him down, Mozart always has his musical genius to fall back on. In Germany it transpired that, despite his conscientious rendition of the National Anthem, G. Southgate had not only no musical genius, but (like the rest of us) no other kind of genius to fall back on.

Still we must take care. After a few retired footballers criticised England’s performances and questioned Gareth Southgate’s incomprehensible management of the team, an army of posher pundits (the ones who never played professional football; call themselves ‘journalists’ and in some cases can probably be found at the Garsington Opera) rocked up to scold those of us thinking such things. We may watch lots of matches; ‘have acquired some bits of jargon’ (double pivot anyone?) and even claim to be able to read and write (not as well as them obvs.) but we don’t know anything about football.

Odd when ahead of EURO 2024 it wasn’t me writing about how Southgate’s new ‘Golden Generation’ would be the team to beat. (I remembered that a goal up at home in the final of the previous tournament they had managed to lose to a team so poor it failed to qualify for the following year’s World Cup.) Despite my ignorance, I somehow never fell for the nonsense that was written about the original ‘Golden Generation’ either. (The ones who lost in the quarter finals of championships held in 2002, 2004 and 2006 before failing to qualify for EURO 2008.)

In Frankfurt the footballing Illuminati who promoted the ‘golden-ness’ of these teams were outraged by the fact that ‘Sir’ Gareth had plastic beer cups and beer thrown in his direction. (None hit him.) They found this disrespectful. Perhaps they should pay more attention to Mozart.

According to the programme notes, in 1786 ‘Le nozze di Figaro’ was a disrespectful piece; a subversive work portraying savvy servants outmanoeuvring their dim-witted masters.

Figaro: If you feel like dancing, Count, you will dance to my tune – I’ll teach you how to caper…

Based on a play which had been banned until 1784 King Louis XVI complained of its author, Pierre Beaumarchais, ‘this man mocks everything that must be respected’.

Unlike kings, but like composers, I assume that football managers understand that one thing coming their way will be people’s opinions. Some - from those who get paid to watch - may be thoughtful pieces paying tribute to all those aspects of the job (not shagging people to whom you aren’t married for example) in which they think you have excelled. But from people who have to pay for our tickets (or at least persuade our friends to buy them for us) and take a narrower view of a manager’s job (play good football/win a trophy if possible) judgement may arrive in a more summary form. Wearing a style of waistcoat you favour, for example, or throwing a plastic cup towards you. I don’t think either of these are disrespectful. One means people think you’re doing a good job and the other that they don’t.

At least in Frankfurt I only remember the fans jeering at the end of the game. At the premiere of Rossini’s ‘The Barber of Seville’ (based on another of Beaumarchais’ trilogy of ‘Figaro’ plays) the audience jeered throughout. So no the audience doesn’t always know best. But if you have a seat at the game where there’s no risk of having beer thrown over you (and a sub-editor back in the office) I’d be cautious about telling the rest of us what and/or who and/or how we can and can’t criticise. Unless you want to risk people mistaking you for Louis XVI. With everything that might entail.