AEB Scramble

[Bored Of Education]

As a lot of England supporters have pinpointed the change in atmosphere on various forums, I don't feel so bad weighing in. Since last Tuesday, where before there had been an element of modesty to the manager, players, supporters and even media, the hubris, sense of entitlement and quite unique nationalism that we are used to from previous tournaments have returned. Previous to Saturday, it had been only in the form of ignoring that there were still three matches and the re-emergence of "It's coming home" (previously only heard ironically as far as I could see). I was playing a punk rock all dayer in the beer garden of a pub in Gloucester and we went onstage straight after the final whistle of the match and feared the worst. As it goes, all the England supporters who piled into the garden were actually really well-behaved with only a smattering of "ICH". However, things got worse when I saw someone with a "Keep St George in my heart" t-shirt (albeit, perhaps not related to the football) and then went into Gloucester where the topless hordes were adding the "Let's 'ave it!" to ICH. Obviously, then I saw the videos of cars, buses and bus-stops being wrecked in post-match celebration. It is hard to believe that any other country would experience the same.

I, of course, contrast it with the experience two years ago in France when Wales supporters were over there. I am not saying that Wales supporters are angels, of course, but the whole feel of the tournament felt different in a major way. Firstly, after a lifetime of failing to qualify, we were just over the moon to be there and the positive attitude reflected to be that. Our celebrations increased incrementally with every victorious step - the first goal, the first win, the goal against England (in retrospect, I am glad we lost that otherwise people's heads would have exploded), topping the group and then the progression including, of course, the win against Belgium. Crucially, however, we didn't feel any sense of entitlement at being there, we just felt that everything starting from just our presence was a bonus and to be celebrated as such - even a pretty dour win over Northern Ireland. At no point, even when we got to the semi-finals, did we think that we were going to get to the final, let alone win it. It was a ludicrous notion that we banished from our mind as soon as it snuck in. Obviously, with Ramsey gone, we had pretty much decided that it was the end of the road anyway so were prepared but had had our fun*. Once we returned, of course, the team were treated as heroes and it is still something we celebrate today and, even during the unsuccessful qualifiers for this World Cup, we were fairly sanguine about the fact that that may have been our one shot. It's a hell of a contrast with the presence situation.

*I may be wrong about this for the people over in France as my trip ended in Paris against NI but that is how it felt over here.

[Felicity, I guess so]

Why are you AEBs so desperate to justify it? Trying to find the (more rare than usual) instances of England players and fans and media being twats... Can't you just hate England because that's what you do?

I am so desperate to find stories like this that i had to go as far as page 2 of the Metro newspaper on the way to work this morning.

You (and others who are desperate - to get 'us' to say something nice about your team getting through) will be pleased to note that The Guardian, like you, has chosen only to see the rosy view, over umpteen pages.

[San Bernardhinault]

I think you miss my point. It's fine to despise England. People have done it for years. But the weird thing is the need to rationalise it. If it needs to be rational there might come a time where you'd have to stop despising England - and that would just be silly.

I do think that Bored has a point - the fairly humble low-expectation England has shifted to a higher expectation, more arrogant thing: not so much from the team, but from the peripheral oafs and the part-time fans some of whom are falling into the idiotic "Jordan Henderson is one of the world's greatest midfielders" line. It is definitely more apparent now than it was a week ago. But I think it would be hard to keep this in check from any team in a world cup semi final (unless, per Bored/Wales, their best players were suspended for that semi and the opponent was on a hot streak).

[Bored Of Education]

Never hear the end of it on OTF or out there in the virtual world?

OTF is a blessed oasis of even-handedness in contrast to out there in the virtual or real world.

[Bored Of Education]

not so much from the team

No, the team and the management have been very good - probably one of Southgate's biggest contributions (if it was he).

I think it would be hard to keep this in check from any team in a world cup semi final (unless, per Bored/Wales, their best players were suspended for that semi and the opponent was on a hot streak).

I genuinely don't think it would have changed much. We knew it was amazing and ludicrous whether we beating Russia easily, finding it hard to beat NI or beating the Golden Generation of Belgium. When we scored against Belgium after Nainggolan's fantastic goal (which settled me somewhat to the inevitable defeat), I said to my wife "We've just angered them now" as I prepared for a battering. I couldn't even celebrate the Robson-Kanu goal properly (aside from its brilliance) as, at 2-1, Wales never feel safe. Of course, for the Vokes goal, I went proper mental. Unless we were doing to Portugal what we did to Russia, I would not have claimed my place in the final.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

I, of course, contrast it with the experience two years ago in France when Wales supporters were over there. I am not saying that Wales supporters are angels, of course, but the whole feel of the tournament felt different in a major way. Firstly, after a lifetime of failing to qualify, we were just over the moon to be there and the positive attitude reflected to be that. Our celebrations increased incrementally with every victorious step - the first goal, the first win, the goal against England (in retrospect, I am glad we lost that otherwise people's heads would have exploded), topping the group and then the progression including, of course, the win against Belgium. Crucially, however, we didn't feel any sense of entitlement at being there, we just felt that everything starting from just our presence was a bonus and to be celebrated as such - even a pretty dour win over Northern Ireland. At no point, even when we got to the semi-finals, did we think that we were going to get to the final, let alone win it. It was a ludicrous notion that we banished from our mind as soon as it snuck in. Obviously, with Ramsey gone, we had pretty much decided that it was the end of the road anyway so were prepared but had had our fun*. Once we returned, of course, the team were treated as heroes and it is still something we celebrate today and, even during the unsuccessful qualifiers for this World Cup, we were fairly sanguine about the fact that that may have been our one shot. It's a hell of a contrast with the presence situation.

Yeah, but you're from a small country. that makes it completely different. Even the biggest dickhead in your support knows that Wales aren't off to invade France. So instead everyone gets caught up in the virtuous cycle of drinking outside with people from other countries and having a nice time, and it all starts to get out of hand, and before you know it people are hugging riot policemen, and singing abba songs. It's great fun. There's loads of england fans who want to do precisely that, and that's what they do too, but it can be made awkward for them.

[Ray de Galles]

Why are you AEBs so desperate to justify it? Trying to find the (more rare than usual) instances of England players and fans and media being twats... Can't you just hate England because that's what you do?

Only just seen this, we keep on explaining it (as opposed to justifying or rationalising it) because we keep on getting asked why.

It’s no exaggeration to say I am currently being questioned five or six times a day about why I don’t want England to win the World Cup.

It can be people in work or close friends - from proper football fans who have had the same conversations with me for decades (and can never explain why my stance is different to them not wanting their club rivals to succeed) to the biennial football tourists who don’t understand football rivalry and need it painstakingly explained to them.

It can be people on social media who pick up on anything less than slavish support for England as a personal slight. Or it can just be strangers you encounter while going about your business who walk up to you and randomly say “It’s coming home” and expect an excited response - this has happened to me multiple times in the last week from cabbies to the guy who wandered up to me while I was walking my dog on the towpath at 8am the other morning!

It even happens all the time on here, you only have to read Sean of the Shed’s (who comes up with many, many examples from the genre) “Would it be so bad...” thread which opens “So is the anti-England feeling largely a hangover from old grievances that belong to the last millennium?” to get a flavour of the “Why don’t you wuv us?!” tone.

Personally, I never try and justify my ABE stance with complaints about their players’ or fans’ attitudes, political issues, the media or whatever else* - it’s just what football fans do.

* which isn’t to say I don’t have issues with aspects of these things, they’re just not the root of my enmity.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

Can only speak for myself, but I'm not expecting or particularly wanting to be wuvved, I'd just like an end to the sweeping generalisations that all England supporters are Brexit voting little Englanders and braying bellends, and this notion that England doing well will create a fascist dystopia (well, any more of the one we already have, right kids).

[Ray de Galles]

Yeah well, like I say, I don’t go down those avenues.

[Sean of the Shed]

It even happens all the time on here, you only have to read Sean of the Shed’s (who comes up with many, many examples from the genre) “Would it be so bad...” thread which opens “So is the anti-England feeling largely a hangover from old grievances that belong to the last millennium?” to get a flavour of the “Why don’t you wuv us?!” tone.

Whose fucking thread now?

[Moonlight Shadow]

On the plus side, if you want a bike ride on quiet roads, wednesday evening will be rather good...

[treibeis]

On the plus side, if you want a bike ride on quiet roads, wednesday evening will be rather good...

I'm off to see Theatre Of Hate. Not because I dislike the English football team - I don't care whether they win or lose - but because I don't really like watching live games on the telly.

[Haddock]

I'm off to see Theatre Of Hate. Not because I dislike the English football team - I don't care whether they win or lose - but because I don't really like watching live games on the telly.

I wonder if any of the fans who were attracted to ToH all those years ago because of their flirtation with Nazi imagery and tropes are still interested in them. If so, a clash of dates between a gig and an England semi might potentially make for a bit of a dilemma: Believing in the Westworld live or No Surrendering in front of the telly.

[Pietro Paolo Virdis]

In the England-Sweden thread Berba brought up the c**** at News of the World and if you want justification at least from me then there you have it. A very large part of the reason why I've been in the ABE for years before I joined OTF is English sports journalism. Hmm, thinking about it, I wonder if that's not the main reason?

I've not had much against the players.
I really liked the side with Waddle, Gascoigne, Beardsley, Platt, Barnes, Robson, Lineker and Des Walker.
Same with the Beckham, Owen, McManaman, Sheringham, Merson, Ferdinand, Campbell, Ince, Neville, Anderton one.

I've a hard time understanding this turning against a player making it a mission to loath him because of one moment then it escalates almost into a cult with all but human sacrifice, one of his children offered at the voodoo altar. But I'll get back to this -->

I've not had much against the fans, honestly. Sure there's the bloody band you wish could be imprisoned a month every time there's the world cup, and there's the clique involved in brawls every tournament and there's this goddamn newish torture of having to hear God save the golden spoon fed billionaire bird ten times every game, and there's the rather tedious behaviour of especially Liverpool fans here in Sweden which doesn't exactly help making you love English football.
But the band is only heard on occasions when they for some reason have placed a mic close to them. The clique is one part a handful of baboons on their first trip abroad since Lord Twizleshrimp annexed Bermuda and made it a British colony, one part drunk fans being provoked as often happens because English fans are stuck with a rumour from the 80's and are still a target. The singing of anthem like a child stuck with an earworm humming it all day long can be shut out. It doesn't take a genius understanding that the vast majority of English fans are like any other. People loving football.

Don't have anything against the English people. I don't give a shit about Brexit. Even if I did, I couldn't be an arsehole convinced that those who voted for, all did so because they're racists and don't want any immigrants at all.

English food is shit but so i most of Swedish. Wait, I take that back. It's not shit, it's funny. Still, not a reason for my ABE.

English tourists can be... an ordeal to be around. But the German and Dutch are much worse. The Swedish not much better than the English. So that's not part of my ABE.

No, it's mostly the English sports journalists. I watched an interview with one from the Guardian during this World cup. Swedish Offside met up with him in front of a stadium, praising him ahead of the talk and don't know if it was agreed he would answer the way he did but by god what a typical obnoxious, entitled journalist prick he seemed to be.
I've told it here before how one of Sweden's biggest dailies used to have one journalist doing nothing but following the herd of English sports journalist around from game to game, reporting about how they were reporting an behaving. He did with awe. It wasn't as if he followed them to report what a bunch of bastards they were, no, it was more his biggest dream to one day become a part of their gang. When they seemed an utter cattle of cu***.
Then of course you have your head lines together with this vile thing of how they during so many years have been quick to form a battue, more organised than a shoal of piranha trying to break a player mentally. The day Beckham was sent off is a perfect example of their vileness. Then there's the fact that Swedish sports journalism has taken after the English, including plenty of them who act and write like their call was to have someone commit suicide over one wrong throw-in.

--> and I can really only guess here but it seems a very English thing to do, this urge to always have at least one to pick on. Someone must always be bullied. Just the other day I asked out loud in another thread whether there was a single not likeable player in the current squad and within minutes Ashley Young was presented as evidence one for the prosecution. I never received an answer why he was but it doesn't really matter, does it? There always has to be at least one.
Maybe it's a British Isles thing? Because now I read how this with likeable squad, that's being mocked. Can't have that, can you? There can't be a likeable squad. At least one of them has to be a prick even if we have to dig up deep from down in the abyss that the only thing he has working against him, is that he listens to Sting.
Of course, this is not excluded England, we all have it in every country this urge to find reason to loath a player or a squad but the level of it is especially high over there.

So, anyway, that's my ABE justified. I don't think some in England deserve to experience a quarter of a dozen lions winning the whole thing. There's a handful of other reasons but that's the main.

[Bored Of Education]

[i]Yeah, but you're from a small country. that makes it completely different. Even the biggest dickhead in your support knows that Wales aren't off to invade France. So instead everyone gets caught up in the virtuous cycle of drinking outside with people from other countries and having a nice time, and it all starts to get out of hand, and before you know it people are hugging riot policemen, and singing abba songs. It's great fun. There's loads of england fans who want to do precisely that, and that's what they do too, but it can be made awkward for them.

Oh, I get that completely.

To echo Ray's point, I have had to ask "Would you support {insert rivals to questioner's club here} if {insert questioner's club here} were knocked out of the FA Cup?" so many times in response to incredulity about my non-supporting of England. This is after I have been almost neutral about the team's performances as well. I have had more than one English person telling me that they were supporting Wales when we got to the semis in the Euros which (a) came over as patronising and (b) made me think that they didn't really get football supporting.

[ad hoc]

(b) doesn't work because England fans don't see Wales as their rivals. That is how football supporting works.

[tee rex]

I have had more than one English person telling me that they were supporting Wales when we got to the semis in the Euros which (a) came over as patronising and (b) made me think that they didn't really get football supporting.

Patronising, yes, but hardly surprising. See Northern Ireland 1982, ROI occasionally, etc. If Wales qualified more than once a generation, it might be different.

I think they get football supporting, in the same way Arsenal and Spurs fans always desperately want the other to lose, but are fine with Leyton Orient having a cup run.

[Satchmo Distel]

Whose fucking thread now?

Me culpa. I was asking why the team, which seems to be the kind of side that progressives would want to see, should be desired to fail simply because of English imperial history. That was badly expressed and I apologize for ignoring the fact that imperialist elements are still present in the "we" assumed by TV commentators.

I still feel however, that wanting the team itself to fail is an unhealthy way to channel those grievances.

[NickSTFU]

(a) came over as patronising and (b) made me think that they didn't really get football supporting.

Part b is in itself patronising and it is of course possible to support two international teams, like people follow two domestic teams. This board is full of them.


Around Shropshire there were plenty of people I know who wished Wales well and actively supported them. Probably due to being a border county, some of the squad playing in the English system, having Welsh friends and supporting the teams that the players turned out for on a weekly basis.

I consider myself Anglo-Welsh, with Irish heritage. I actively supported Wales in '16 and I still take more than a passing interest in the teams fortunes now.

On the other hand I don't give two shits about Ireland.

[Duncan Gardner]

@AH. Indeed. England fans' own rivalry (with Germany) isnt really reciprocated. Largely as this is only the 2nd time since 1968 that England have gone further

@Nick- indifference right back at yer. Floreat Salopia

[Diable Rouge]

So, will the redtops go with Agincourt or Waterloo if it does prove an Anglo-French decider?

[Duncan Gardner]

Waterloo- fought in Belgium with the Germans decisive

Other Boney battles in pop

Lodi
Blue Austerlitz Cult
Gudbuy t'Jena
Yes tonight Josephine

[Lang Spoon]

My only hope after the England 2-1 aet win is the vomitus from the beeb and UK wide papers is enough to turn the stomach of even the most red white and blue underpants Scot (like my departed grandad, a Unionist Labour man who’d turn puce at mention of 1966 on the beeb as long as I could remember). The team might be likeable barring rat faced racist Vardy and a few others, but Big Country Nationalism is repellent and I hope youse lose big style. Sorry. Plus, its England. Jimmy Hill. toe poke Narey. Greavsie, jokes about Scottish keepers. Colin Hendry being turned like a muppet. England.

[Ray de Galles]

Big Country were bloody brilliant, man! The first album was, at least.

[Lang Spoon]

Small country nationalism isn’t all sunshine and rainbows either, but for the reasons Berba gave above the Irish, Welsh and Scots have been more ingratiating drunk fannies kissing Swedish policewomen and the like than setting fire to things.