North Korea

Excruciating, cramped football? Guess who...

June 24, 2010
You can take the team out of England...
You can take the team out of England...

I have experimented with a whole range of football identities during this World Cup, but as regular readers of this blog will know, I have a special affection for our friends in the Aegean. A couple of days ago I was Portuguese; the Greek has romantic entanglements at that end of the Mediterranean and when we went to watch them demolish North Korea in a Mozambiquan migrant bar in the Johannesburg Central Business District I was very happy to go along for the ride. I have been South African to the best of my ability; Ghanaian with as much gusto as I could muster; Mexican, Paraguayan and Ivorian in person; Nigerian and Uruguayan at a distance and although never actually Argentinean I look forward to a temporary visa some time in the later stages of the competition.

And then I have been English too, and that is altogether more difficult. I can be Greek, and walk away from the injustices and dysfunctionality of its polity. I can be Ghanaian, and walk away from grinding poverty. And I can be English—but I can’t walk away from the team’s tortured performance and the tawdry elements of public life they seem embedded in: the tumourous celebrity culture, and the relentless application of hype and spin to public debates of all kinds, debates invariably dominated by disingenuous voices and characterised by a crushing lack of spontaneity and adventure.

It was England vs Slovenia and I was exhausted. Not tired but exhausted, and still cold. We may have moved up the housing ladder here, but the heating had hardly improved. As we watched the camera pass along the England team during the anthem I felt my legs ache, my head throb and my body slump. I had hit a World Cup wall: five cities, five live games, three fan parks, dozens more games on TV, more relatives than I care to remember, and the daily challenge of being in South Africa even a inch or two outside the sanitised bubbles that have been created for visitors. And now I had to watch England, whose first two games left me hoarse and disappointed.

I watched the game with the Operator, who, newly arrived, brings his unstinting energy to proceedings. In fact, it was all I could do to stop him from trying to go to the USA vs Algeria game in Pretoria before trying to speed back to Soccer City for the Ghana vs Germany game lsat night. With the exception of the opening twenty minutes or so there was more energy here than there was in Port Elizabeth. You probably watched the game too. If you didn’t, don’t worry. England's goal made me sit up, and during the long second half I roused myself from my torpor to berate the team who played as though they’d been embalmed. England scraped through. The Operator gave us a blast of “We’re not going home” to the tune of “Knees up mother Brown”, which was the song of choice in those balmy days in Portugal in 2004. They were singing it again in Port Elizabeth. Even I was humming along and feeling a little less tired.

England have been here before, playing excruciating, cramped football in the group stage of the World Cup, just squeezing their way past opponents of much more limited resources. In 1990 they made it all the way to the semi finals, where West Germany beat them on penalties. In 1998 the journey was terminated in the round of 16 by Argentina, after an epic duel that also ended in penalties. In 2002 and 2006 England crept to the quarter finals before being dumped out by Brazil and Portugal respectively. This time the reward for our folly is a round of 16 game against Germany in Bloemfontein. By a complete fluke, I have tickets for the match. I’m hoping for 1990—but I’m planning for 1998.