It Might be Coming Home

As Wednesday approaches, the good people of England are once again engaged in that most curious of national pastimes: the systematic priming of the emotional pump for a fresh torrent of disappointment. It is a spectacle of mass masochism that defies all logic, and I say this as a man who has spent a lifetime watching eleven fit young millionaires in white shirts fail, with remarkable consistency, to kick a ball into a net quite as often as the other blokes.

Why, you might reasonably ask, do we subject ourselves to this exquisite form of torture? It is a question that requires a certain level of psychological plumbing, but for now, let us simply note that the impending World Cup semi-final against Argentina serves as a grim reminder of a personal tally I would much rather not possess.

In 1973, I was a mere sprout of eight years. My family didn’t own a television, a deprivation that felt quite Victorian at the time, so I was dispatched to my uncle’s house to witness England being politely shown the exit by Poland in a 1-1 draw. I recall the evening with startling clarity: the fizzy sting of cream soda, the salty crunch of crisps, and the sudden, heavy realisation that the world was a cruel and fickle place. It was a marvellous evening, right up until the point where it wasn’t.

Fast forward to 1986. I was twenty-one and serving in the British Army in Germany. Between work tasks, we would dart inside to catch glimpses of a diminutive Argentinian gentleman named Maradona, who had the audacity to punch the ball into our net with the brazen confidence of a man swatting a fly. The goal stood, and thirty years later, the injustice of it still smarts like a fresh paper cut.

By the time I was thirty-one, I was watching Gareth Southgate send a penalty into the stratosphere, an act of unintentional charity that saw Germany progress while we went home to contemplate our sins.

The list goes on, a veritable catalogue of sporting woe. And yet, like thousands of my fellow countrymen, I find myself fluttering with a hope that is as inexplicable as it is dangerous. I am trying, quite desperately, not to let my enthusiasm for the realm get the better of my common sense.

After all, we must look at the evidence, mustn’t we?

Consider, if you will, the rather sobering assessment of Thomas Tuchel following our quarter-final escape against Norway. He observed:

“The commitment is there but we made life very, very difficult for us in the way we played, how we played. Sloppy, tactical mistakes, not fast enough. Not repetitive enough. We were lucky enough.”

Now, I am no footballing savant. I am merely a slightly creaky observer who has spent decades watching England with the sort of clenched-jaw intensity usually reserved for dental surgery. I hope beyond all reason for a victory, and when one miraculously occurs, I find I have aged a decade and chewed my fingernails down to the quick. When we lose—which is the more familiar terrain—there is that lingering, leaden sensation of “not again” that sits in the stomach for days like a poorly digested pork pie.

This raises the inevitable question: why bother? My wife, Mary, poses this with weary regularity, whether I am fretting over the football team or the rugby team. “It’s just a game,” she says, with the calm rationality of someone who hasn’t tethered her happiness to a bouncing sphere. I am left speechless, primarily because I know I am about to sound entirely unreasonable.

I want to yell that it is vastly more than that.

As it turns out, science is on my side for once. There is a phenomenon known as BIRGing, or “Basking in Reflected Glory.” When England triumphs, we don’t say, “Those lads played well.” We say, “We won,” as if we ourselves had been sprinting across the grass rather than shouting at a screen. Our brains register the victory as a personal triumph, providing a much-needed jolt to our collective self-esteem.

Conversely, we have CORFing, or “Cutting Off Reflected Failure.” This is the psychological equivalent of ducking into an alleyway when you see someone you’d rather not talk to. We subconsciously distance ourselves from the loss—“They really fell apart, didn’t they?”—to protect our fragile egos. Though I must confess, for those of us who are particularly far gone, this particular safety net is often full of holes.

If that isn’t enough, consider the chemistry. Our very hormones are at the mercy of the referee. Studies show that testosterone levels fluctuate in sympathy with our team’s fortunes. A win brings a rush of dopamine; a loss, or even a particularly tense draw, sends cortisol levels through the roof. We are, quite literally, experiencing a biological fight-or-flight response while sitting in a comfy chair.

Finally, there is the matter of our ancestry. Humans spent millennia as tribal creatures, where survival depended on group loyalty and defending the perimeter against the blokes from the next valley. In our modern, sanitised world, sport is one of the few places where that ancient, hard-wired tribalism can come out to play. We are evolutionarily programmed to care.

So, “just a game”? I think not. I have finished watching matches feeling as physically spent as if I’d been out there myself, usually harbouring the delusion that I could have stopped that shot—which is impressive, given that I was the least athletic boy in the history of my school.

And so, I live in hope that it is finally coming home. Of course I do.

When Wednesday rolls around and my heart begins to hammer like a trapped bird, I can explain to Mary that I’m not being dramatic, I am simply a victim of my own neural pathways and endocrine system. My biology has taken the wheel, and I am merely along for the ride.