FIFA World Cup: Fighting once every four years to prove the best

The world’s biggest sporting spectacle is finally on. After four years, the world’s best are fighting to prove they are indeed the best. And in doing so elicit bizarre, often larger-than-life responses from fans. For example, in Kolkata, a million miles removed from the action, mishti makers are investing serious creative energy into making what they call the Brazil and England ‘sandesh’. That sounds nice.

However, in pubs in Glasgow and Edinburgh, fans are rooting for anyone but England, while the university town of Oxford will be painted red and white and St George’s Cross will replace the Union Jack for a month. Students will make it a point to gift red and white balloons to tourists.

Having watched parts of the 2002, 2006 and 2010 world cups in Oxford, the best sight for me was of the dons carrying boxes full of champagne bottles in preparation for the games. They would give up their grumpy and sombre academic looks for a month even.

Scenes in Scotland are profoundly different. While the United Kingdom’s football madness compares with India’s cricket mania, it also divides the British Isles. Watching England play at an Edinburgh pub has an element of menace to it with a potential for violence.

In fact, as the Scottish Daily Mirror reported the day after the England-US match in 2010, a four-year-old was assaulted for supporting England. His father wasn’t spared either. A blackboard sign reportedly read—‘School children not allowed for unruly behaviour the other night’.

What explains this divisiveness? The answer, perhaps, lies in the fact that English imperialism was local before it was global. England’s first imperial territories were Ireland, Scotland and Wales. This local empire produced ripples in sport and elsewhere. For all the rivalry between Celtic nations, England for them is the nation to defeat.

In an opinion poll conducted by The Times, London, in 2006, Bob Rogers put the anti-British sentiment in perspective nicely: “The whole thing is best illustrated by the changes over the past 40 years. In pictures of the 1966 final at Wembley the stands were awash with Union flags. In 2006, there are none, only the St George’s Cross is flown. There has been a huge identity shift in the interim. This, I believe, is a good thing. The English are rightly proud of their country and want to show this. They don’t feel part of a ‘United Kingdom’ any more than the Welsh or the Scots do. Face it; there is no United Kingdom outside the realms of Jurassic politicians and credulous monarchists.”

So while we continue to celebrate England and the world cup in Kolkata, forgetting our colonial past, in Great Britain the reception to the cup is much more fractured.

Having said that, there certainly is an England that loves its football beyond comprehension. This passion was best summed up by the preparations undertaken by the owners of the White Horse, one of Oxford’s best known pubs. “The World Cup is sacred. It is the best festival we can dream of. The business is unbelievable. We have special dishes and innovative desserts named after our opponents. Each England goal will be accompanied by madness and we must be ready to satisfy the thirst of our customers. There’s nothing like the Cup. It’s a pity it comes every four years.”