Do you love your country?

And what's in a game?

Photo by Nik on Unsplash

I am not known for my love of football. I have only ever been to one match. Even then, it wasn’t to understand more about what everyone insists is the “beautiful game”. It was to write a feature about a poet in residence at the team that seemed to be the sworn enemy of every man I knew.

I thought I should probably wrap up warm. I wondered if I should take a Thermos and some ham sandwiches. I wondered how I would find the stadium. When I got on the train, I decided I could probably ditch that worry. I could, I realised when I got off at White Hart Lane, just follow the other 32,000 people to the stadium. Which was, it turned out, packed with catering outlets offering drinks and snacks.

What I remember about that match is that fountains shot up on the pitch and I felt, for a moment, as if I was at Versailles. And then the players strode out on to the slab of green. They were in white. They looked, I suddenly thought, like gods. I felt something in the air I wasn’t sure I had felt before. It was a kind of collective alertness, like an electric charge.

I didn’t follow the intricacies of the match. At the end of the game, the score was nil nil. (Which is also the title of a wonderful poetry collection by the Scottish poet Don Paterson.) I didn’t leave that stadium thinking: I must do this every weekend. But I did leave thinking that there was something there that had a touch of majesty, a touch of magic.

And that, I suppose, is why I decided last week to go to see Dear England, James Graham’s play about Gareth Southgate’s efforts to turn around the fortunes and culture of the England team. That, and the fact that I love the work of James Graham, who also wrote the plays This House, Ink and Best of Enemies and the TV dramas Brexit: The Uncivil War, Sherwood and Brian and Maggie (which I wrote about here).

Dear England was first performed in June 2023 and covered the run-up and aftermath of three tournaments: the semi-finals at the 2018 World Cup in Russia, the 2020 European Championship final at Wembley Stadium and the 2022 World Cup in Quatar. It got rave reviews and won the 2024 Laurence Olivier Awards for Best New Play. James Graham has revised and updated it to include England’s defeat in the UEFA Euro 2024 final to Spain and Southgate’s departure.

There were things about the play I didn’t like. I have no idea why a playwright as talented as Graham would choose to depict Boris Johnson, Theresa May, Liz Truss, Gary Lineker and Greg Dyke as, essentially, cartoon characters. Are politicians and pundits somehow less “real” than footballers? Graham’s other work would suggest not.

Here are the lads! (In the play)

But his exploration of what it takes to win, and how to live with losing, is both moving and gripping. With the help of a psychologist, Dr Pippa Grange (played by Liz White), Southgate (played by Gwilym Lee) encourages his charges to move from grunting machismo to deep reflection about what it means to represent England. What does England mean to them? He tries to get them each to find “a story” they can tell about why they want to compete and win.

In June 2021, Southgate wrote an open letter to England fans. He talked about his own childhood obsession with football. He talked about his sense of identity and values and how they related to his family and, in particular, his grandfather, who fought in the Second World War. That letter started “Dear England”, which, of course, gives the play its title.

Everyone, he continued, “has a different idea of what it actually means to be English” and of “what pride means”. He was aware, he said, that there was a “narrative” that “some players don’t know what it means to play for England - or don’t care”. But that, he said, was “false”. Despite “all the changes in modern football,” he said, “what cannot be questioned about the current generation of England players is their pride in representing this country”.

That pride certainly emerged in the play. It was also evident in the Euro final, which, delayed by the pandemic, finally took place at Wembley in July 2021. It was a big day in our household because Anthony had spent five years working as an architect on the re-design of the approach to Wembley stadium. His big day turned into a bad day as so-called England fans smashed through barriers, stormed through turn-stiles, tore out trees and caused scenes of violence and chaos. And all of that was before England, in its first major final for 50 years, lost.

I nearly cried when Bukayo Saka missed the penalty that lost England the game. I did cry when I read about the racist onslaught that followed. Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho also missed and felt the wrath – and racism – of angry Brits. As Jude Bellingham later old CNN, “We had players, black players in the team, players of all different backgrounds from all different countries in the team. And then as soon as they missed the penalty, they’re not English, they’re just black.”

He said he got racist messages in his Instagram every day. “What if it was me who missed the pen?” he said. “And all of a sudden you’re English for seven games, you miss a pen and you’re nothing.”

When I read and hear things like this, what I feel is anger, grief and shame.

Like many of the England team players, I am the daughter of an immigrant. Unlike the three players who missed the penalties on that fateful occasion, I have pale pink skin. I am intensely aware that that gives me an advantage in this country that those super-talented young men will never know.

I wasn’t thrilled a few months ago when a young man in the next street blocked my way with his van, refused to move and insisted that I back half-way down the street. When I resisted, he called me a “privileged woman”. I wanted to yell that he didn’t know anything about me or my life and how dare he call me “privileged”. He was wrong to block my way and it was up to him to move. I did tell him he was in the wrong, but in the end, fearing a bust-up, I moved. In one sense, and only one sense, I knew that he was right. My white skin does give me a privilege. No one ever asks me to speak out for my “community” in the way people constantly ask my black friends.

I live, by the way, in Hackney, where just 36% of residents are white British. So yes, I am in a minority and it wouldn’t be at all unreasonable to ask me to speak for that minority. But, of course, I can’t and don’t.

(If you doubt the concept of “privilege”, please watch this video, sent to me by a reader of this newsletter, and let me know what you think.)

So what would I do if Gareth Southgate set me the test about England?

Hmm. That’s a tricky one.

I have never really felt English, though I don’t know what feeling English is meant to feel like. My mother was Swedish. Englis0h was her second language. She spoke it fluently, perfectly, but with the hint of the sing-song intonation that means I can almost always spot a Swede on the Tube.

My father was the son of two Scots. I grew up knowing I was half-Scottish and half-Swedish and that the two halves combined somehow made me British.

My brother and I were born in Rome. My sister was born in Bangkok. My best friend as a small child was born in Barbados and so were her brothers. As a child, I thought all children were born abroad.

My mother and sister in Bangkok. Aren’t they both gorgeous?

I suppose I have always felt like a mongrel and been drawn to mongrels. There seemed to be a kind of purity about being English-English that made me feel like someone from the outside looking in.

If my parents had made a different decision about where to settle, I could now be wondering what it felt like to be Swedish and how I would feel if I were ever to represent Sweden on the international stage. But they didn’t and so the question I’m left to ponder is how I’d have felt if I’d been part of Southgate’s team.

Surprised, obviously, given that I don’t know the rules of football, let alone how to play it. Probably a bit embarrassed. Yes, here I am and I’ve done incredibly well to get here – so have all the lads – but all this fuss is a bit much. Terrified about the weight of responsibility. Oh my God, if I miss that penalty, it will be like losing a war. And perhaps a bit mystified. Why is my country made up of these different separate parts? And how exactly do they relate to each other? Is it a bit like the Holy Trinity and if so, which one is the Holy Ghost?

I suppose you could say that my feelings would be quite English: a mix of embarrassment, confusion and fear. Mustn’t boast. Mustn’t grumble. Let’s give it a damn good go.

Not an awe-inspiring mix of emotions, but a better mix than those, for example, that fuelled Brexit, which seemed to be along the lines of: let’s sock it to Johnny Foreigner and show them who’s best. Reader, we did, and our net migration quadrupled even as our GDP shrank. That’s the kind of thing that happens when you choose delusion over facts.

After the UK voted to leave the EU, I could hardly bear to say I was British. When people asked me where I was from, I’d say London. London feels, in some ways, like a country of its own. It’s the one I’ve lived in for nearly forty years and the one I call home.

And England? My England? Your England? Our England?

Well, the England I can get behind is the one that’s a bit like Gareth Southgate. Decent, well-meaning, modest, slightly buttoned-up. A bit like Keir Starmer, in fact. Far from perfect, but not an embarrassment on the international stage. Unlike Boris Johnson, say, or Nigel Farage.

In his “Dear England” letter, Southgate warned England fans about abusive or racist behaviour. “At home,” he said, “I’m below the kids and the dogs in the pecking order but publicly I am the England men’s football team manager.” So English! And also strangely powerful. “I have a responsibility,” he added, “to the wider community to use my voice, and so do the players.”

He had, he said, “some bad news” for those who did want to indulge in that kind of behaviour. “It’s clear to me,” he said, “that we are heading for a much more tolerant and understanding society.” Those people who continue with the abuse and the racism are, he said, “on the losing side”.

With Reform currently leading in all the polls, and with a white supremacist in the White House who uses false evidence to berate a black leader who fought apartheid, it isn’t clear to me that they are losing. There are some battles you have to keep fighting, and some games you have to keep playing, until you win.

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How do you feel about England? Or, if you’re not English, your own country? I would really love to hear your thoughts.

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