Tom Lappin: Patriotic fervour verges on mania as England fire the passions back home

Published on Friday 11 June 2010 22:09

FLAGS, flags, as far as the eye can see.

Spend a long weekend in England, and the eye is constantly assailed by the cross of St George, piled high in every kind of cheap merchandise in supermarkets and petrol station forecourts, emblazoned across every hostelry from the chi-chi Bath gastropub to a Battersea dive-bar, fluttering from the windows of white vans and open-top MGs, decorating residences in Cambridgeshire housing estates, Chelsea villas, even Number 10 Downing Street.

The overall effect is mostly disconcerting, if occasionally touching. Those of us who grew up with the game in the late 70s and 80s, when English football was substantially racist, can't help but feel a little frisson of joy at seeing a couple of black guys stopping at traffic lights, gangsta rap booming from their wheels, a flag of St George billowing from the wing-mirror, or two small Asian boys hoofing a ball at each other in Hyde Park, both in the red shirt and three lions of England.

Mostly, the atmosphere in England is one of feverish expectation, verging on mania. You get the feeling it could all turn very ugly if things go awry.

In 1970, when the England squad, confidently expected to retain the World Cup, sang about "Back Home", they conjured up an image of proud chaps in suits and ties sipping mild in saloon bars, sparing a brief thought for the Bobbies and Geoffs sweating in Mexico, before heading home for a tinker in the greenhouse.

Forty years on, back home they'll be thronging the bars in their replica strips, hurling frantic imprecations and abuse at the big screen, milling out on to the streets ready to vent elation or frustration on whatever gets in their way. They'll lap up the xenophobic hysteria in the tabloids, seizing on the slightest rumours and fabricated gossip, exalting the smallest success, exaggerating the scale of any setback. If Ashley Cole makes a mistake because his mind was distracted by imminent divorce, they might even resort to burning the beloved Cheryl in effigy.

If English football has become an irrational force, that insanity is amplified in a World Cup, when the scattered club passions of the fans are focused with frightening obsession on the national team. While players are habitually loyal to the party line that the fans are brilliant, when they are in the midst of a major tournament they must begin to feel that the support is like a needy, neurotic girlfriend who is constantly in need of reassurance that things are going okay, and capable of throwing a menacing strop if they feel that their adoration is not being returned.

The pressure is pumped ever higher by the media. Those who complacently say that intense and constant scrutiny of the press and TV cameras is all part of the job, haven't considered how it affects the psychology of the players. And, it seems, the manager. This week Fabio Capello confronted a crew of photographers whom, he believed, had been intrusive, treating them to the harshest word of criticism in his English vocabulary, usually directed at his players – "Why?" – delivered with withering scorn.

Capello grew up with Italy's system of ritiro, seclusion camps where players bond and prepare for games outside the spotlight, beyond the reach of the media. It clearly pains him that modern football demands that players have to suffer being seen relaxing on safari, and that he has to answer all the same questions over and over again.

It'll be fine once the games start, is the usual complacent assumption. But that depends on the results. Tonight's match for England should be the most complicated in the group, and by coming first, it will set the mood for the tournament. The USA's performances in the Confederations Cup last year showed they are a committed, organised, athletic, physical side, perhaps lacking a little flair or imagination. They, and the altitude, will cause England difficulties, particularly if their players decide to strike a blow for Uncle Sam, and give the English a slapping in revenge for polluting the Gulf of Mexico (although it might be a stretch to pin that one on John Terry).

A draw, or even defeat, is not inconceivable, and would spark a backlash of media invective that would hardly aid cohesion and confidence in the England camp, particularly if abetted by the sort of abuse and singling out of scapegoats that England fans now regularly favour.

Watch the faces of England's players as they mouth a version of their national anthem in Rustenburg tonight. Beneath the surface defiance there will be fear, and those passionate fans might be at the root of it.

Capello has been trying to eradicate that apprehension, to find a team that can play calmly, with assurance. A win tonight would be the only way of preventing that anxiety preying on a nation with four decades of failure at major tournaments nagging at the players. Capello might struggle to comprehend a race memory he, an Italian, can't share. It would be some feat if he can persuade his men to eradicate all thoughts of what they are saying back home.