If there is a
certainty that ranks along side with death and taxes, it is the certainty that
the average England Football Fan will screw up England’s image at the very
moment when global cameras are focused on England.
The recently
concluded European Cup should have been a very proud moment for England. The English
national team did exceptionally well, only losing in the final on a penalty
shoot out and defeating strong teams like old rival, Germany on the way to the
final. English soccer has never looked better. The much hyped “English Premier
League,” (EPL) was looking like it was actually producing players that could go
toe-to-toe with the best in the world.
It wasn’t
always that way. When I was growing up in England back in the 1990s, English
football was overhyped. Everyone bragged about the EPL and highly talented
players like Paul Gascoine (Gazza), David Beckham and Wayne Rooney and yet the
performance of the national team was barely worth mentioning. England once
reached the semis in the 1990 World Cup but that was pretty much it.
This time,
things seemed different. The English National Team reached the semi-finals in
the 2018 World Cup in Russia and their run in the European Championship suggests
that this was no fluke. England was showing the world that it had a national
squad worth talking about. Like the World Cup winning French teams of 1998 and
2018, the current English squad is racially diverse and its recent successes
should have been a showcase of a multiracial England showing its strength to
the world.
Unfortunately,
the fans had other ideas and the behavior of the fans is such that whatever the
national squad does on the pitch is irrelevant. One of the most prominent
moments was fans without tickets gate crashing Wembley Stadium (all of them not
wearing mask – welcome super covid spreader) and then attacking Italian Fans
after losing the final. The “black” players on the English squad have been
racially abused and just to show off English hospitality at its best, there was
“booing” of the national anthems of the other countries in the tournament. As for
the “sportsmanship” that the British are so famous for, there was the incident
of shinning a laser pointer into the eyes of the Danish goalkeeper on route to the
final.
The “Good”
manners of the England’s Football Fans can be seen at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxNUepxhY5I
England
Football Fans behaving like Sewer Rats is nothing new. I’m old enough to
remember watching people get crushed to death on TV during Hillsborough and the collapse of the
Heysel Stadium is also within my living memory. It goes without saying that whenever
England or English clubs went abroad to play, everyone else thought – “Good God
– not them again, let’s make sure they f** off back to where they came from.” The
only difference with the recent incidents is that it comes at a time when the
England football squad is actually giving English fans every reason to be
happy. You’d imagine that fans would be encouraging the team to go onto
something better after a good showing.
What is interesting about
England’s horrible football fans is that England is also the country that produced
the ideal of what a man should be – well mannered, sporting and concerned about
the welfare of others. The concept of the “English Gentleman,” has become the
ideal of what high society in every part of the world should look like. If you
look at “independence” leaders in the post-colonial world, many were produced
by the system that produced English Gentlemen. Pakistan’s founder, Mohammad
Jinnah, who famously said that he would rather be ruled by an Indian Terrorist
than an English Gentleman, was also famous for ensuring that all his suites were
made in Saville Row. Even when we in the colonies were trying to get rid of the
English, we still looked up to the English as an ideal.
So, how is it such that the
nation that produced the ideal of what a man should be, can also be the nation
that produces the most horrible specimens of humanity at every football game?
As a matter of full and frank
disclosure, I went to a public school (defined as the public that can pay). Churcher’s
is a small school of no great significance. However, it’s still part of the “Public
School” system in the United Kingdom, which plays a role in shaping many of the
people who make the UK tick.
While I am a beneficiary of Public-School
education, there is an intrinsic problem with its very existence. In the
British context, the guys who go to public schools are usually from families
that can afford to pay hefty school fees along with the taxes that are partially
used to fund the school system provided by the state.
The guys I grew up with,
were from what you’d call decent enough families. Sure, I didn’t grow up alongside
the super elite who populated the more illustrious public schools. However, my
friends were from pretty decent families. I grew up alongside the children of
ICI executives and officers in the armed forces. The education was not just
academic but social and learning good graces was part and parcel of growing up
(as mentioned in previous postings, I actually encountered very few incidents
of racism – helped that I was willing to do my part on the rugby pitch).
The state system in the UK
functions rather differently. The kids who end up in the system are less well
off and often have less resources at their disposal. Teachers struggle
alongside unruly kids and less cooperative parents. While there have been
success stories from the state system, the problem in the UK remains that as a
rule of thumb, the better academic results, which translates into better
university placements and therefore better jobs still come from the public
school system.
Hence, the system that
produces the English Gentleman coexists alongside a neglected system that
produces the friendly people at football games. The guys who come from the
system that produces the English Gentlemen know exactly how to manipulate the guys
from the system that produces football fans. Both Boris Johnson (Old Etonian)
and Nigel Farage (Dulwich College) are from the system that produces “Gentlemen.”
Their manipulation of statistics on how EU money could be spent on the NHS is manifested
by the racial abuse hurled at England’s black players.
Unfortunately, the only
solution proposed comes from leftist politicians who will make a few public pronouncements
about the public school system. Such pronouncements make good headlines but don’t
solve the real issue, which is to raise the standard of the schools in the
state system so that they can compete with those in the public-school sector
(which was happening in Petersfield when I was leaving – the local comprehensive
got themselves a dynamic headmistress who rebranded it the Petersfield School
and gave Chucher’s a good run for its money). Very little of that actually
happens and until the schools in the state sector are boosted, English Gentlemen
will be produced alongside England’s well behaved football fans.
We in the colonies are also
destined to follow the example of the mother land in keeping the majority less
educated than they should be. In India, you have elite colleges like the Indian
Institutes of Technology and Management, producing world class corporate
leaders working alongside the colleges that are effectively printing qualifications.
Here in Singapore, we have elite colleges like Raffles, Anglo-Chinese, Hwa Chong
and Victoria running the entire system and the neighbourhood schools which can
barely raise enough to buy an eraser and produce the academic results that
somehow get forgotten about whenever the government wants to show the world how
“educated” we are.
Whilst it is important to train up the elite, its not sustainable if the elite only comes from one group. If you want a nation to grow you need to improve basic education for the masses. You cannot have one system that produces the ideal of manhood and another that produces sewer rats.
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