Hubris
November 21, 2007I honestly thought they were Italians.
I was sitting (yes, sitting! I got lucky!) on the Tube on the way home last night, head buried in the Endymion Omnibus, when a load of rowdy blokes got onto the tube, adding to the already sardine-like quality of the rush-hour crowds. They started singing football songs, which had a south European lilt to them, hence my false assumption: they were Croatian.
Apparently, there was a big football match last night at Wembley. I live fairly near Wembley and I had no clue. This is because I don't follow football. It doesn't interest me in the slightest. In fact, on some level, I'm anti-football. I see people talk for hours about the ins and outs of their sports, applying incredible reasoning and statistical powers to the points-systems and league-tables. At the same time, the real world around them needs these people to apply this deep thought to the real world problems around them.
It's a taboo to talk about sex politics and religion in polite company, but it's OK to talk football. In the end, our public discourse is infantilised.
The Croatians started banging the ceiling of the carriage, singing "We love Croatia, we do!", and some brave Londoners tried to start a counter-chant of "So why don't you fuck off back there then!", but it was a flaccid attempt and the commuters weren't in the mood.
Still, the local pride was still there. After all, London had once been the capital city of an Empire that controlled a quarter of the world's population, and this faded jingoism is now relegated to playing itself out on the football pitch. Perhaps this is better than the fields of Flanders or Omdurman, but the pride's still there and one chap muttered to the other, "They'll be laughing on the other side of their faces after the match".
England lost 3-2 to Croatia. Croatia was all over them like a cheap suit, from what I saw whilst channel-hopping. England was beaten by a country with a population 13 times smaller with an economy 31 times smaller. The Croatians were laughing on the other side of their faces alright -they had to give the other side a rest.
