Supporting England Is Not the Same Anymore

A discourse on the decline of international football

Wembley Stadium before England v Spain, Euro 96, the picture is from givemesport.com

The sight of a packed Wembley Stadium and a sea of swaying crosses of St. George endures for those who cherish the memory of Euro 96. The England team galvanised the nation by winning memorable victories and providing many iconic moments. England famously beat the Netherlands 4-1. Against Scotland, David Seamen saved Gary MaCallister's penalty before Paul Gascoigne flicked the ball over Colin Hendry's head and scored one of the most iconic England goals. Stuart Pearce went psycho after netting in a penalty shootout before victory over the Spanish. In the semi-final against Germany, “Gazza” narrowly missed the ball when sliding across the hallowed Wembley turf. Gareth Southgate's sudden death penalty was saved. These moments are etched into the national footballing memory. Euro 96 is the earliest major international football tournament that I can remember. As well as the matches, I recall the flags, togetherness, and the excitement of the English public. Many can fondly reminisce about a unified country at a fever pitch.

In 2024, I could not see many crosses of St. George when I passed through London after England's first game of this year's European Championship. It seems unlikely that following England will ever again feel like it did in Euro 96. I do not know about you, but my enthusiasm for the England team is nothing like it once was. The manager is the often irritating Southgate who derided Brexit for its ‘‘racial undertones’’. It is evidently beyond him to respect that Brexit was in part motivated by a desire to preserve a sense of oneness and homogeneity integral to nationhood. It is this oneness that has allowed international tournaments to feel so special. It has provided an incredible sense of unity, high spirits, and the joy and pain of living and breathing every kick as a part of a distinct people bound in defeat and triumph. On top of Southgate's remarks, we have endured Marxist genuflection from England players recently. The Football Association (FA) embrace this and support rather than counter the cultural leftism of the moment. These factors have helped to create an unseemly leftist vibe around the England team.¹

Southgate's remarks and the knee-taking would cause less annoyance if not compounded by developments that diminish the integrity of international football. Talk Sport recently reported that in addition to the display of the Cross of St. George on Chelsea and England player Cole Palmer’s boots, his footwear shows the Saint Kitts and Nevis flag ‘in a tribute to his dad, whose family is from the Caribbean country’. If it permits the presentation of hyphenated allegiance, the England side ceases to be reflective of a solely English concern. It turns into something other than. The notions of we and us are instantly sidelined. The England team becomes a platform for foreign affinity and the bastardisation of a historic identity.²

Palmer is not the first player to use footwear to express dual loyalty. At the 2018 World Cup, Xherdan Shaqiri wore boots displaying the Swiss flag on one heel and the Kosovan flag on the other. After Switzerland beat Serbia, the BBC ran the headline, ‘‘Double Eagle’ Celebration Provokes Serbs’. Switzerland’s ethnically Albanian goalscorers Granit Xhaka and Shaqiri celebrated with ‘double eagle’ gestures that represent the double-headed eagle on Albania’s national flag. Both players chose to make what should have been a happy moment for the Swiss an assertion of Albanian ethnic identity. To them, victory for Switzerland was a motive subordinate to an avowal of their primary allegiance. Their acts drained the significance of victory for the Swiss while selfishly claiming glory for Albania. Such a flagrant betrayal of the country these two players chose to represent brings into doubt their suitability to play for Switzerland. It also raises questions about the legitimacy and authenticity of international football today. A Serbian newspaper said that they had ‘‘humiliated’’ Switzerland; it is not hard to understand why.

Serbian striker Aleksander Mitrovic put it perfectly when he said of Shaqiri, "If he loves Kosovo so much and decides to flaunt the flag, why did he refuse a chance to play for their team?" Mitrovic raises a very interesting point. One wonders how many players represent a country purely for the elevated profile and enhanced career opportunities that follow.³

Just before the 2018 World Cup, Germany players Mesut Ozil and Ilkay Gundogan posed for photographs with Turkish President Recep Tayip Erdogan. During a meeting at the Four Seasons Hotel in London, ‘the players handed signed club shirts to the leader of Turkey’s Justice and Development (AKP) party. The shirt given by Gundogan, who holds German and Turkish passports, bore the message: “To my president, with my respects’’’. Surely, starker proof of the use of the German national team for careerist over heartfelt motives need not be sought. In recognition of this audacity, German MP Sebastian Munzenmaier said that unless the two players stopped ‘‘flattering’’ Erdogan, ‘‘the Turkish side can look forward to two new players’’. This episode ‘reignited a debate over dual citizenship and national identity in Germany’. Perhaps FIFA should revisit the question of eligibility to represent national teams. The chances of this are very slim.⁴

The debasement of international football by players with divided or deceitfully professed loyalties compounds the actions of governing bodies and corporations that besmirch the game. The new Nike England kit features a defiled Cross of St. George, with purple and blue replacing red and white. Nike described the disfiguring of the English flag as a ‘playful update’, but many have discerned this to be the latest in a long line of elite assaults on our identity designed to deracinate us by severing our connection to our symbols and traditions. Nike’s use of the word ‘playful’ is indicative of the attitude of major corporations towards peoples and nations. The backlash to the Nike kit is at least a cause for some optimism.

Often one to outdo England in cultural degradation, Germany and Adidas have released a pink kit ‘in a move that claims to represent the diversity of the country’s population and football fanbase’. This act is an admission on the part of footballing authorities that Germany contains people with an aversion to traditional German identity. It brings into focus the propensity of globalist regimes towards division and fragmentation.⁵

Should England play Germany at Euro 2024, the occasion should be all about the two nations involved. Current trends would suggest this is too much to ask.

The old Wembley Stadium and the Twin Towers, the picture is from Wikipedia.

A Coda For The Twin Towers

The newer Wembley Stadium is a rootless globalist edifice. The old Wembley was built for the well attended British Empire Exhibition in 1924. ‘Sir Robert McAlpine’s civil engineering firm worked to the designs of architects Sir John Simpson and Maxwell Ayrton.’ The building of the arena was completed in 1923, finished in just ten months. Its official capacity was 127,000. After the exhibition, it was kept for sporting occasions and became a loved landmark until its demolition in 2003.⁶

The Twin Towers were an enchanting feature of the walk up Wembley Way. Historic England says of the towers: ‘The design took inspiration from the Imperial theme. For instance, the domes of the twin towers were inspired by Mughal architecture but were built in concrete.’⁷ A website dedicated to Wembley and the Twin Towers pays great tribute and tells of a ‘marvellous novelty of juxtaposed angled window and parapet configurations, complimented by an array of ornamental fixtures, including a little royal crown atop the dome supported flagpole. Splendid! It seems that the people of that age would do anything to create something really memorable, perhaps to last forever’. In a separate article, the writer George captures the symbology, meaning, and magic of the structures, and he opposes this to the vapid buildings of recent times. ‘There’s no mistaking the wealth of design novelties that went into the elements of windows and dome-work and battlementation of the Twin Towers, a mighty statement from London to the world. How could these loving national symbols be the subject of such betrayal. How could they be mercilessly cut down, only to be replaced by typical crap multi-cloned cobblers that may disgrace any amateur's drawing board.⁸

‘There is no doubt that this, the greatest of stadia, is modelled on works of old, and bears the marks and traits of many a Roman arena and castle keep. It’s not a watery wet shopping mall design of today. It’s a defiant statement. The twin towers of strength. Jealous developers are at this moment breaching the battlements. They would kill us all for the hunters bounty. Nothing is sacred.’⁹

The author went on: ‘Drool at the artistry and sculpturing of Edwardian excellence. Limitless love of delirious designs mutate into marvellous manifestations. This is not something to be ignored, this is something to be celebrated and preserved forever. Someone’s heart and soul went into this building. It’s not the throwaway idiot clone that we see polluting every city on earth. This is emotionally grand statement that dare not be disturbed.’¹⁰

Unfortunately for George and countless others, the Twin Towers were not disturbed but destroyed. A BBC article from November 1998, written in anticipation of the demolition, provides some insight into the thoughts and feelings of the interested figures at the time. The piece notes the Daily Telegraph quoting the then Labour sports minister Tony Banks, he described the towers as ‘‘just concrete blocks’’ (this is unsurprising given what New Labour did to the country). England 1966 World Cup winner Sir Geoff Hurst disagreed, ‘"The twin towers are synonymous with the history of the game. I would have thought the twin towers could have been integrated in the new stadium. They mean so much,"'. His former England teammate, the late Sir Bobby Charlton, summed it up perfectly: "'They represent the country that gave the world the game."'¹¹

Today, the new Wembley features an arch of soulless steel. It could be from anywhere and represent anything. It bears no relation to England, its culture, or its people. It does not inspire, and it has no beauty. It does not speak to the soul like the Twin Towers did. One could be forgiven for thinking that the arch and the new stadium were meant to encourage great forgetting of our past and the achievements of our ancestors. The arch may receive begrudging praise as a feat of engineering, but that is about all that can be positively said of it. Were it to burn down today, it is hard to imagine that such an incident would provoke anything like the earnest outpourings of George when he paid homage to the cenrerpieces of the old arena. If anything, some might see it as a cause for celebration.

In 1976, the Twin Towers were granted Grade II listed status (in England, listed buildings are those ordered to be preserved by order of the Secretary of State). The aforementioned BBC piece from 1998 states that the monuments were intended to be a part of the new Wembley design. Then came a U-turn following claims that the structures would crumble if there were attempts at relocation. ¹² It seems hard to believe that efforts at preservation could not have been undertaken, at least for some museological end. All that remains of the towers today is a flagpole base inside Brent River Park.¹³

The flagpole base of one of the old Wembley Twin Towers inside Brent River Park London, the picture is from The Sun.

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1. Nicola Bartlett, Gareth Southgate says there were ‘‘racial undertones’ in Brexit vote, Daily Mirror, 29/11/2018, https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/gareth-southgate-says-were-racial-13665569, accessed: 18/6/24

2. Robert Calcutt, Why Chelsea star Cole Palmer proudly displays Saint Kitts and Nevis flag on his boots, Talk Sport, 3/6/24, accessed: 16/6/24

3. BBC, ‘Double eagle’ celebration provokes Serbs,’, 23/6/18, BBC, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-44586587#:~:text=Serbia%20has%20hit%20out%20at,eagle%20on%20Albania's%20national%20flag.,accessed: 18/6/24

4. Philip Oltermann, Ozil and Gundogan’s Erdogan picture causes anger in Germany, The Guardian, 16/5/24, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/16/mesut-ozil-ilkay-gundogan-recep-tayyip-erdogan-picture, accessed: 16/6/24

5. Sam Smith, Germany to wear pink ‘diversity’ kit at Euro 2024 as players hit back, 23/4/24, The Daily Express, https://www.express.co.uk/sport/football/1881165/Germany-pink-diversity-kit-Euro-2024, accessed: 16/6/24

6. Duncan Whinton-Brown, The Historic England Blog, Heritage Calling, 26/4/23, https://heritagecalling.com/2023/04/26/100-years-of-wembley-stadium/, accessed 16/6/24

7. Ibid

8. Wembley Stadium Twin Towers, Twin Towers of Wembley Stadium, https://www.angelfire.com/wy/wembleystadium/history.html, accessed: 16/6/24

9. Wembley Stadium Twin Towers, Wembley's Twin Towers: A Day in the Life, https://www.angelfire.com/wy/wembleystadium/day.html, accessed: 16/6/24

10. Ibid

11. BBC, Sport: Football Twin Towers Facing Demolition, 11/11/1998, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sport/football/209766.stm, accessed: 16/6/24

12. Mathew Crist, How Tearing Down The Twin Towers Destroyed The Twin Towers Destroyed The Magic Of Wembley, The Sportsman, 26/7/20, accessed: 16/6/24

13. Vic Holly, Hidden Memory, Iconic Wembley Stadium relic which saw World Cup lifted now lies forgotten in London park ahead of FA Cup Final, The Sun, 2/6/23, accessed: 16/6/24