No country for tribal men
At the end of June, Britain will go to the polls to decide whether or not to remain part of the European Union. While the weightier topics in the campaign have been economic and legislative matters, a large part of the debate has also focused on the notion of identity. The ‘Leave’ campaigners have been keen to stress the need to protect the ‘British identity’ while deriding the lack of a sense of ‘feeling European’. Before these votes will be cast, however, many English people will be making another decision regarding identity; whether or not to engage themselves in their national team’s bid for glory in France at Euro 2016.
It is a phenomenon which has long intrigued me; the idea that large numbers of die hard English football supporters, when offered a month of international football and cheering ‘their’ team on, opt to pass. “Not for me, Jeff”.
It seems counter-intuitive, at first. Why would these people, passionate football fans, display such a lack of interest in their national team at a major tournament? However, when you peer under the hood and take a look at the make-up of the English fanbase, you begin to understand.
Those fans who throw themselves most readily behind the Three Lions, the lads who play in the awful England Band (Great Escape theme anybody??), those who drape every inch of their house in bunting for the duration of a major tournament summer, are largely fans of clubs removed from the highest table of domestic football. Think back to the last England game you watched in the 2014 World Cup. Think back to the fans and their flags, adorned with messages like “Gillingham FC” or “Stevenage on Tour”. Not many George’s Crosses with a Liver bird or a Red Devil, was there?
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Credit: thecreativeplayground.co.uk[/caption]
Fans of ‘smaller’, less glamorous clubs are as passionate about football as anyone. However, this passion does not allow them to go to France or Spain to see their team play in front of 50,000 people. Their shot at the big time, their time in the sun, comes from following the Three Lions.
Without making sweeping generalisations, those fans who decide against supporting England in these tournaments, or who cannot be arsed with international football in general, more often than not support larger, more successful clubs. Their identities as football fans are married to their clubs.
That hunger to be part of something huge, of being in the spotlight, is satisfied by big league games or exciting away trips in European competitions. Is it really more exciting to play Russia in Marseilles than to go to Barcelona and see your team play? Every second week, they find themselves sat in packed stadiums with the eyes of the nation fixed on their team.
Bigger than this, however, is the tribal nature of being a football fan. If you spend a season gleefully taunting Harry Kane or Wayne Rooney because they play for your hated rivals, it sticks slightly in your craw to then cheer them on to glory come the summer. Disdain for your rivals is bred into every football fan, it just so happens that for Manchester United or Chelsea fans, those rivals are also mainstays of your national team.
When you spend 38 weekends a year, and every day in between, thinking and talking about your club, going to games, dissecting them afterwards in the pub, it is hard to switch lanes at the drop of a hat and start cheering for that same plonker whose general shiteness you were singing about in the stands last week. Your identity as a football fan, understandably, is bound too closely to tribal loyalties.
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Credit: mijado78v3 on Youtube[/caption]
If the English supporters are an example of tribal loyalties outweighing national pride, to an extent, Ireland is the perfect counterpoint.
In the case of Irish football fans, they are not divided into 92 different factions, it is not about rivalry between clubs. Rather, what we see is a battle between League of Ireland fans and those who support English (or one Scottish) club sides. The tension exists largely in one direction, from those LOI supporters who regard ‘English’ fans as having turned their back on soccer in Ireland. They lament the armchair fan who can name every Premier League player but would be hard pressed to identify any League of Ireland player, unless Jason Byrne counts. Does he still count?
So as the diehard LOI fans load into cars or onto buses and trains from Dublin to Cork and Galway and Ballybofey to see their teams play, and the Premier League fans settle into the pub to watch Liverpool vs Manchester United, it can feel like a fairly fractured landscape in Irish soccer at times. All of that changes, however, when the Boys in Green play.
When Shane Long scored against Germany last October, or as we squinted through the fog in Bosnia to half-see Robbie Brady score, nobody stopped to ask the stranger they were hugging if they supported Bohs or Man United. When any of you lucky enough to be going to France wait in line for a pint at a fanzone on match-day, you won’t be asked how many LOI games you have been to this season.
And that is because we all buy into our identity as Irish supporters. It is the one thing that is truly ours. It is our shot at the big time. There is nothing glamorous about sitting at home on your own watching an English club side on a dodgy internet stream or about packing into Finn Park on a rainy Friday night after a sweaty 4 hour bus ride. But Stuttgart, Giants Stadium, Paris, Lille, Bordeaux; as Eamon Dunphy might say, that’s showbiz baby.
The Irish team is our one chance as soccer fans to be part of something truly huge, one transcendent moment that will echo in time.
Whether you identify as a Liverpool fan, an English fan, a Dundalk fan or something different again, you follow football for a chance to share in glory. That is what we are all hoping for. We want our side, whoever they are, to score a winner in the last minute and to let us jump and shout and dive and dance together, one mass of fans, a part of this glorious moment. And so if you’re decking your house in bunting this June or only offering a passing glance, I really hope you find that glory.
