England expects: English newspapers’ narratives about the English football team in the 2006 World...

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2010 45: 199International Review for the Sociology of SportJohn Vincent, Edward M. Kian, Paul M. Pedersen, Aaron Kuntz and John S. Hill

team in the 2006 World CupEngland expects: English newspapers' narratives about the English football

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International Review for the Sociology of Sport

45(2) 199–223© The Author(s) 2010

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DOI: 10.1177/1012690209360084http://irs.sagepub.com

Corresponding author:John Vincent, The University of Alabama, College of Education, Department of Kinesiology, Box 870312, Tuscaloosa, AL 35487–0312, USA Email: [email protected]

England expects: English newspapers’ narratives about the English football team in the 2006 World Cup

John VincentThe University of Alabama, USA

Edward (Ted) M. KianUniversity of Central Florida, USA

Paul M. PedersenIndiana University, USA

Aaron KuntzThe University of Alabama, USA

John S. HillThe University of Alabama, USA

AbstractThe essence of global sports has been competition among nations at the international level. For football, arguably the world’s most popular sport, global rivalries are paramount, and every four years since 1930, it has been the World Cup that has provided this excitement. English newspaper narratives about the English men’s national football team competing in the 2006 World Cup were examined to gain insight into how English national identity was portrayed. Using a qualitative textual analysis methodology, this study drew on Anderson’s (1983) theory of the imagined community, Hobsbawm’s (1983) notion of invented traditions, and the Eliasian (1991) concept of habitus codes. Set against the contemporary trends of devolution, globalization, and a post-7/7 discourse the newspapers relied on a reductionist, essentialist construction to elicit an emotional connection with a homogenous form of English national identity. The narratives seemed designed to galvanize support for the English team through references to historic English military victories



200 International Review for the Sociology of Sport 45(2)

and speeches. These served to rekindle images of bygone, mythical, and imperialistic eras. The newspapers also reverted to an ‘us vs them’ invective in blaming Swedish manager, Sven-Göran Eriksson, for England’s failure to win the tournament with the ‘greatest generation’.

Keywordsmedia, national identity, textual analysis

IntroductionThe purpose of this study is to analyze how English national identity is portrayed in selected English newspapers’ narratives about the English national football team com-peting in the 2006 World Cup. This study draws on the conceptual framework and meth-odology used in a series of previous studies by Maguire and colleagues (1999a, 1999b) analyzing mediated accounts of the English national football team competing a decade ago in the 1996 European Championships. As national identity is a fluid and evolving construct, this study can provide an interesting snapshot of how English national identity was constructed in the selected English newspapers a decade later in 2006.

‘England expects that every man will do his duty’: thus spoke Admiral Horatio Nelson on the eve of the naval battle against the French in 1805. It was effective and the English fleet won in what was an historic victory. It was a rallying call for all Englishmen to pull together in a common cause. Fast-forwarding two centuries, selected English newspa-pers in the 2006 football World Cup tournament in Germany made the same call. Football in its modern format was essentially created in England in the 19th century, yet since the inception of the World Cup in 1930, England had managed but once, in 1966, to deliver the Jules Rimet trophy back to its native shores. The stakes have effectively risen in the 1990s and in the 21st century. The country’s top league, the English Premier League (EPL) is generally recognized as the strongest in the world. But the national media hys-teria that surrounds the World Cup every four years seems to reach new heights with each succeeding tournament.

Football – The world’s gameProfessional men’s football is England’s and indeed the world’s most popular spectator sport (Jones, 2008). Every four years, the premier international football tournament, the World Cup finals are held. The World Cup finals feature arguably the best 32 national football teams in the world, most of whom have spent the better part of the preceding two years qualifying. The World Cup attracts spectators from every continent and the games are televised throughout the World (FIFA, 2006). Nearly half the world’s population watches the World Cup final on television every four years, thus the football World Cup becomes the arena where ideologies linking country, culture and national identities are produced, reproduced, and contested (Crolley and Hand, 2006). In the latest 2006 tour-nament media and fan expectations reached fever pitch in England’s quarter-final against Portugal when 80 percent of the United Kingdom1 viewers watched the game (Broadcaster’s Audience Research Board, 2006). Media stakes in England were high. The World Cup pits nation against nation and garners enormous print and electronic



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media coverage. This reflects English and world media interest that results in exhaustive global coverage as the World Cup becomes a primary vehicle to sell copies. Journalistic inspiration during the period pinnacles as writers draw on imaginative and inventive metaphors and similes, often employing highly emotive vocabulary and language to gen-erate interest and entertain the reader (Crolley and Hand, 2006).

Football and national identitySports and national identity have been inextricably woven together since the tail end of the 19th century with the introduction of international competition (Crolley and Hand, 2006). Weight (2008) noted that while traditionally the English have been modest in their public displays of Englishness this has changed somewhat in the last decade as a result of identity anxiety stemming from devolution within the British Isles and expanding European power. Resurgent English national consciousness has been particularly expressed through English sporting success. Recent examples include public celebra-tions and euphoria after winning the Rugby World Cup in 2003 and the 2005 Ashes vic-tory against Australia in cricket. Indeed, Bouchard and Constant (1998) have argued that international football matches are one of the few remaining spheres where it is socially acceptable to display raw patriotism. Law (2001) has noted the role of major interna-tional sporting events in providing sport journalists with opportunities to wave national flags in patriotic support for the country’s team. Giulianotti (1999) has even claimed that during international football matches the team ‘. . . embodies the modern nation often literally wrapping itself in the national flag’ (p. 4). Bale (1986) has noted that only war-fare feeds the imagination and cements national identity more than sports. At interna-tional sporting events then, the sports team’s performance reawakens a dormant national consciousness. They become symbols of national health and well-being (Tuck, 2003a).

In their efforts to attract readership, the World Cup fully reflects current print media trends that globalize and commodify celebrity sports teams and stars. The World Cup therefore brings together what is described by Rowe et al. (1998) as the ‘sport-national-ism-media troika’ (p. 133). This is as Polley (1998) observed the interplay between national sports teams, the media, and national media audiences. During the event the media plays a major role in constructing, (de)constructing, and reinforcing through narratives and images what is meant by the shared meanings, understandings, and values that contribute to national identity (Whannel, 2008).

Media accounts of the English football teamThe role of media in constructing and (re)constructing national identities ties in sports to the concept of English national identity. Maguire and colleagues published a series of articles that drew on the Eliasian concepts of habitus codes to make sense of the mediated coverage of the English football team competing in the European Championships in 1996. Maguire and Poulton’s (1999) discourse analyses of English newspapers’ cover-age of the English national football team competing in the European Championships in 1996 found that newspaper narratives about national identity drew on extremely national symbols and stereotypes. They were replete with personal pronouns and martial metaphors,




and were consistent with a nostalgic bygone era with invented traditions. Maguire et al.’s (1999a) discourse analysis of newspapers’ coverage of the England vs Germany semi-final match of Euro 96 revealed an ethnic English assertiveness and defensiveness that articulated xenophobic references to the Second World War and the English World Cup victory in 1966. Poulton’s (2004) textual analysis of English television coverage of the same event also found that commentaries were crafted to elicit a sense of identification with the English national team through the use of ‘I/we’ and ‘us/them’ pronoun pairs. Maguire et al. (1999b) noted that both English and German newspapers drew on national symbols and stereotypes and made extensive use of personal ‘I/we’ pronouns to evoke a sense of national unity. They further found liberal use of power descriptors and sport/war/martial metaphors throughout the narratives. Overall, the media were recasting the England vs Germany game in 1939–45 metaphors.

Since Maguire and colleagues’ studies, several researchers have re-examined sports media accounts of English national identity in the context of major international football and rugby tournaments. Tuck’s (2003b) analysis of the 1995 Rugby World Cup found the English rugby players were generally portrayed as ‘embodiments of England’ (p. 178). Accounts were replete with national stereotypes that differentiated the English players from their international competitors in adversarial terms. Tuck (2003b) concurred find-ing numerous narratives drawing heavily on the ‘I/we’ and ‘us/them’ distinctions.

Garland and Rowe’s (1999) analysis of English newspapers’ coverage of the European Championships in 1996 drew similar conclusions noting that George Orwell’s charac-terization of sport as ‘war minus the shooting’ had been fully embraced by the sport journalists through their use of combative imagery and martial metaphors to dramatize their accounts. The militaristic rhetoric in English newspapers such as the Daily Mirror and The Sun was extremely xenophobic in the England–Germany semi-final (with head-lines such as ‘Let’s Blitz Fritz’ and ‘Achtung Surrender’), that the newspapers were criticized by the National Heritage Select Committee (1996) for their ‘xenophobic, chauvinistic and jingoistic gutter journalism’ (p. 1). Garland’s (2004) analysis of popular newspapers’ discourses during the 2002 World Cup also found the coverage contained examples of xenophobia. The media therefore, in competing for readership, had been steadily escalating their use of military metaphors and combative, adversarial reporting over time.

Methodology

Textual analysis

In this study, we employed textual analysis, an unobtrusive and non-reactive tool that can be used to reveal the explicit and subtle meanings conveyed in the newspapers’ narra-tives (McKee, 2003). As a means for employing our textual analysis, we examined how English national identity was constructed through the English national football team competing in the 2006 World Cup in five English national newspapers. Through our methodology we utilized multiple levels of inductive coding merged with larger theoreti-cal conceptualizations of national identity. The specific texts, methods, and analysis are explicated below.



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The newspapers

We examined hard copies of The Times, The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, and The Sun, as well as their respective Sunday editions and sister newspapers, which for The Sun is the News of the World. These newspapers were chosen because of their national prominence, their extensive sports coverage, and because they represent differ-ent strands of the English newspaper market, and therefore appeal to different demo-graphic segments or readers. The newspapers were collected throughout the duration of the 2006 World Cup, which was held from 9 June to 9 July 2006. The day prior to and the day following the end of the tournament were also included in the analysis to allow for pre-tournament coverage in addition to the coverage of the final game.

Coding proceduresThe mechanism primarily used for the analysis followed inductive coding practices that generated multiple levels of data, which were interpreted according to the larger theoreti-cal frames of national identity. Specifically, open and axial levels of coding constituted our textual analysis of the newspaper articles, generating multiple and layered elements of analyses.

As a means of applying our coding techniques, each article was read twice and narratives related to national identity in the extensive number of articles devoted to the English national football team were highlighted. These themes were chronologically organized by athlete and newspaper. After constructing the initial database of transcripts, data were examined multiple times with the aim of identifying dominant narratives as well as contradictions and inconsistencies across transcripts. Following the work of Creswell (2003) and Strauss and Corbin (1999), this initial form of coding utilized a constant comparison means of analysis to generate emergent themes and locate systematic relationships within the data. The con-stant comparative means of analysis was utilized in two levels of coding, open and axial.

Open coding was utilized initially in order to organize raw document data into over-arching themes and thereby concentrate the large amounts of data into workable items for analysis. Open coding has been used successfully in the past to draw relevant themes to the surface from deep inside the data (Neuman, 2003). Such themes exist at a low level of abstraction and extend from the researcher’s initial research question, concepts in the literature, terms used by members in the social setting, or new thoughts stimulated by immersion in the data (Neuman, 2003). In order to more rigorously analyze our data, we built upon our open coding process and incorporated axial coding as a means of linking previously identified themes and categories within the data. Axial coding provides greater depth to initial thematic codes by linking and relating codes to one another (Strauss and Corbin, 1999). Through axial coding, specific codes were developed across transcripts and subsequently analyzed according to the larger theoretical frameworks of nationality.

AnalysisThe preliminary codes generated from this inductive process were then interpreted draw-ing on Anderson’s (1983) theory of the imagined community, Hobsbawm’s (1983)




concept of invented traditions, and Elias’s (1991) notion of habitus codes. This process necessitated that certain themes relating to the nationalistic discourses of the players were given greater prominence. Thus, by design, this methodology does not aim to reproduce the newspapers’ coverage or reporters’ narratives, but to uncover the textual constructions of national identity permeating the dominant discourses.

Validity/trustworthinessConstructing a methodology that draws upon multiple levels of coding and interpreting our data according to well-developed theoretical frameworks resulted in a reliable research design with validated analyses (Marshall and Rossman, 2006). Our analytical methods were designed to ensure consistent data collection and analysis, thereby giving a large degree of validity to our findings. The end result was a dynamic and layered analytical framework that contributed to theoretical and data-driven insights, which are discussed below.

LimitationsThough the coding process and subsequent methods of analysis afforded insight into themes of English national identity, it is important to recognize that like all theoretical interpretations of social constructs ours is not without its own set of limitations. As Fairclough (2003) noted ‘we cannot assume that a text in its full actuality can be made transparent through applying the categories of a pre-existing analytical framework’ (p. 16). Thus, although our application of Anderson’s (1983), Hobsbawm’s (1983), and Elias’s (1991) theories provided an important framework for the interpretation of our data, we acknowledge that our use of existing theories to organize and orient our analysis poten-tially excludes alternative interpretations of our data. Further, our use of close textual analysis sought to explicate the development of national identity on both local and global levels, managing these overlapping discourses through multiple levels of coding. As such, our analytical strategies assumed that close readings of public documents reveal larger cultural sensibilities and systems of meaning-making. Given all of this, it remains important for future studies to consider the development of national identity according to different and newly developed theoretical frameworks as well as to examine how par-ticular texts reveal a disconnect between local and more global ways of knowing.

Theoretical approaches to mediated sport and national identityA number of theoretical perspectives provide insight into the intersection of mediated accounts of sport and national identity at major international tournaments, such as the World Cup. To guide our interpretations, several complementary and intersecting theo-ries about national identity were used as conceptual anchor points.

In his seminal work, Anderson (1983) claimed the nation ‘is the most universally legit-imate value in the political life of our time’ (p. 3). He noted that the nation was an imag-ined community ‘because the members of even the smallest nations will never know most



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of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion’ (p. 6). Anderson articulated how a national sense or con-sciousness of connectedness can be developed through the mass consumption of medi-ated reports such as newspaper articles, which are read almost simultaneously by thousands of people, who are aware of each of their fellow citizens’ collective existence even though they have never met each other. Thus, it is a socially constructed mental image that people have in their minds of the imagined community that is their nation.

Hobsbawm (1983) claimed that nations and nationalism are products of ‘social engi-neering’ through invented traditions. He defined invented traditions as:

A set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past. (p. 1)

In essence invented traditions form the important function of unifying people by estab-lishing continuity with a suitable historical past. Although the past can be interpreted in different ways, invented traditions and rituals can be thought of as a rediscovery of an appealing aspect or era in the history of a particular nation. Thus, nationalist historians have invented the customs, myths, symbols, and rituals, which form the national culture, and Hobsbawm (1983) argued national identity and character are reinvented and rein-forced through the selective construction of them. In terms of international sporting con-tests, flags, scarves, team emblems or motifs, replica shirts, and the singing of national anthems before matches are all examples of invented traditions.

Both Anderson (1983) and Hobsbawm (1983) posit that to sustain themselves, national identities must continually evolve, be re-invented, or re-imagined to reflect con-temporary culture. This is important because national identity is not a fixed construct but is fluid, changing, and at times contradictory. Hall (1991a) argued, ‘all of us are com-posed of multiple social identities’ (p. 57). It has risen in importance in the postmodern era as the free movement of people, goods, and services has increased the visibility of hybrid and diasporic identities (Hall, 1991b). However, the dominant mediated portrayal of national identity frequently subverts such complexity and fluidity by silencing other possible cultural local and ethnic identities (Brooks, 1999). Hobsbawm (1983) argued that national identity is reinvented and reinforced through the selective construction of historical accounts and mythology that emphasize and popularize positive aspects of the national character.

This study also draws on Elias’s (1991) theory about interpreted habitus codes. Habitus codes or ‘codes of being’ are a complex combination of dormant sleeping mem-ories or dispositions and invented traditions that have become deeply ingrained in the subconscious, but which are activated by specific symbols as signifiers for national iden-tity. Elias claimed it is this complex process that blends individual and collective signi-fiers into national identity. He described how multiple layers of overlapping affiliations (e.g. local, regional, national, international) shape people’s identity. Many different lay-ers create the complex ‘latticework’ of the habitus of a person, and mean that the average person views their world through intersections of both individual and collective lenses or ‘I/we’ identities, to produce national identity.




Drawing on Eliasian concepts, Maguire and Poulton (1999) described how the emotional bond between the individual and the nation are aroused by common images and symbols, particularly at major international sporting events. Tuck (2003a) explained collective memories and experiences of ‘invented traditions’ of the ‘imagined commu-nity’ create collective emotional bonds and ‘I/we’ relations of national identity. These ‘I/we’ memories and emotional connections enable ‘us’ to share things in common, while also differentiating ‘we/us’ from ‘they/them,’ or the outsiders/foreigners. This forms the basis of national identity politics. Elias’s (1991) concept of the ‘I/we’ individual and col-lective emotional identity is frequently displayed at major international sporting events, where journalists reporting on the fortunes of their national team become what Tuck (2003a) described as ‘media patriots’, using personal pronouns in their narratives to engender support through collective we-images. Thus, mediated discourses about major international sporting events can serve to highlight and strengthen ‘I/we’ habitus codes.

Elias’s (1996) analysis of Germans revealed how through socialization dominant notions of national identity gradually become internalized and ingrained, or hardened as the habitus or second nature of its people through accounts of the nation’s historical and social development. Elias and Scotson (1994) described how a declining world power would try to perpetuate its perceived superiority or ‘special charisma’ by selectively reliv-ing images resonating with a bygone glorious era which in effect helps sustain an out-dated ‘fantasy shield’ or ‘image’ about a once powerful nation (p. xiii). Drawing on these Eliasian concepts, Maguire and Poulton (1999) claimed that success in an international sporting contest can assist in constructing a ‘fantasy shield’ or false notion of esteem about a declining nation’s ‘special charisma’, and succeed in reawaking citizens’ national ‘sleeping memories’, and rekindling habitus codes about its former greatness. As Poulton (2004) noted, a nation’s declining status can be masked by nostalgic dreams of its ‘special charisma’, which draw on a mixture of historical events and traditions from an almost mythical bygone glorious age in mediated accounts of national identity at major interna-tional sporting events. National identity, however, only becomes meaningful when indi-viduals accept the rekindled dominant notions of the ‘sleeping memories’.

Sociohistorical and geopolitical contextEnglish newspaper narratives about the English national football team competing in the 2006 World Cup cannot be interpreted in a cultural vacuum, but must be placed in their own contemporaneous geopolitical, historical, social, and cultural context.

Devolution and the European UnionIn the first decade of the new millennium the issue of English national identity was the subject of much discussion. The discourse about English national identity, and questions about what it meant to be English occurred in part, as a result of Scottish, Welsh, and Northern Irish movements to greater political independence, culminating in the creation of the Scottish Parliament and Welsh and Northern Irish National Assemblies. While the Scots, Welsh, and Northern Irish were gaining greater independence through self- government, the encroaching influence of the expanding European Union was becoming



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apparent and generated concern over the further erosion of English sovereignty and autonomy. In the first decade of the new millennium the European Union adopted a single common currency, the Euro, and expanded by admitting several Eastern European coun-tries (King, 2006). Free movement of labor, for example, in the European Union had resulted in extensive immigration into the United Kingdom from Eastern European countries.

RaceIn mapping the socio-cultural context of what ‘Englishness’ means today, one has to consider race and the effect that immigration has had on a hitherto White English iden-tity.2 Large-scale immigration into England in the second half of the 20th century has created a hybrid nation and a multicultural richness. Reflecting the multicultural make-up of the country, the England 2006 World Cup squad of 23 players included seven black or mixed race players.3 However, cultural integration and the trend toward a more inclu-sive, multicultural national identity has long been the subject of resistance reflecting fears that English identity is becoming more fragmented and as such it has been a source of recent discontent (O’Donnell, 2007).

Post-7/7 discourseLess than four years after the 9/11 terrorist atrocities in the United States, and a year before the 2006 World Cup, London was attacked by Islamic, English-born terrorists, in what became known as the 7/7 bombings (Perryman, 2008). In a post-7/7 context, right-wing rhetoric keen on revitalizing English national identity and culture questioned the efficacy of a multiculturalism that submerges a White Anglo-Saxon monoculture, while also drawing on public fear spawned by Islamic extremism (Weight, 2008). Laments about multiculturalism and the corresponding loss of homogenous identity and culture, was permeated with narratives advocating tighter national security controls, including the introduction of identity cards, and stricter immigration controls in the media lexicon. The specter of a sinister Islamic homegrown ‘enemy within’ caused considerable con-sternation in the political discourse and re-awakened racial and ethic tensions (Carrington, 2008). This also coincided with the re-emergence from relative political obscurity of the ethnonationalist right-wing British National Party (BNP) (Macklin, 2008).

‘Little Englander’Over the last decade in reaction to England’s loss of power and influence, unease about multiculturalism, and a fear of terrorism, a ‘Little Englander’ island mentality re-asserted itself. The ‘Little Englander’ mentality, which reflected a desire for England to return to a former golden age, was re-ignited by then Prime Minister John Major in part as a response to England’s perceived identity crisis (Maguire, 1993). Major noted the significant role of sport in Britain’s national heritage and described sport as ‘. . . one of the defining characteristics of nationhood . . .’ (Department of National Heritage, 1995: 2). Reflecting this prevailing geopolitical environment in the 1990s the terms




British and English gradually became less interchangeable synonyms. More recently in the context of the 7/7 debates a ‘Little Englander’ narrative embraced a racialized articulation of English identity and adopted a defensive Europhobe lexicon in cam-paigning against immigration and warning against the perceived threat of home-grown terrorists (Burdsey, 2008).

Flags are signifiers of national identity and represent symbols of cultural contestation. In the 1990s, English football supporters began displaying the English flag, the Cross of St George, rather than the British Union Jack flag to display their patriotic support for English football and rugby teams (Carrington, 1999). This became particularly evident during the European Football Championships, held in England in 1996, when the Cross of St George was prominently displayed everywhere, in a euphoria of nationalistic sup-port for the English team (Garland and Rowe, 1999). Likewise, when the English rugby team won the Rugby World Cup in 2003 and the English cricket team won the Ashes in 2005, the public celebrations ensued replete with Cross of St George flag waving. In some respects the ‘Little Englander’ mentality can be seen as insular and parochial. Set against this background it might be argued that English national identity has assumed a greater self-consciousness and certainly visibility around major international sporting events in the last decade (King, 2006).

Globalization In addition to the pressures on national identity from regional bodies such as the European Union, there have been the additional strains imposed by globalization. Defined by Hill (2009) as the trend towards increasing interdependencies among world markets and the diffusion of new ideas, technologies, resources, products, services and lifestyles, global-ization also threatens to subsume national cultures in a global monoculture. While the world rejoices in its benefits, including worldwide TV transmissions of sporting events, it also magnifies the pressures on national cultures and heightens the strains placed on national identities (Harris, 2006). Within the global sports arena, it also places additional burdens on national sports teams that shoulder the responsibilities of representing their countries in global competition. For English football, these pressures multiply, for the modern game of football was invented in England and most commentators view it as the national game (Hill and Vincent, 2006). The rich tradition of English football, and England’s status as a world football power with arguably the most recognizable and competitive league in the world, the English Premier League, all make football a signi-fier of English national identity. The globalization of football that has become a marked feature since the formation of the English Premier League (EPL) in 1992 has resulted in an exponential number of foreign players plying their trade in the EPL, as well as an influx of foreign owners (Hill and Vincent, 2006). The prevailing insular mentality has broken down with the introduction of many foreign players and managers/coaches in the EPL. However, although the quality of the league has obviously benefited from the for-eign influx, when leading clubs such as Arsenal and Chelsea fail to field a player from the British Isles, it may make it more difficult for British fans to identity with their team. Within this context, the English national team fills the void for identity with the local rather than the global.



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‘Build-them-up then knock-them-down cycle’

In the era of celebrity-driven sports journalism in which the commercial pressure to sell more newspapers seems to stimulate more controversial narratives, a ‘build-them-up then knock-them-down cycle’ has been a notable feature of English newspaper narratives about the English national football team in the lead up to each successive World Cup in the last two decades. Thus, the hopes and expectations of the imagined community are built up to seemingly unrealistic levels before the tournament and then the unrealistic expectations are dashed with each team’s successive failure to repeat the glory of ‘the boys of ’66’. With rare exceptions this cycle is completed when a litany of recriminations and an apportioning of blame which follows the perception of underperformance of the England team and their failure to win the World Cup. This media generated cycle only exacerbates the ‘40 years of hurt’ since World Cup victory in 1966.

Results

‘Don’t mention the war’

In the build up to the 2006 World Cup, which was held in Germany, England’s traditional rival, popular English newspaper narratives were punctuated with outbursts drawing on negative German stereotypes. Several popular English newspapers evoked images of the two World Wars and impending 40th anniversary of England’s defeat of West Germany in the final of the 1966 World Cup, echoing the xenophobic English football fans’ chant of ‘two world wars and one world cup’. Most newspapers reported English comic John Cleese’s alternative 2006 World Cup anthem, ‘Don’t Mention the War’. This drew on a sardonic style of English humor, enjoyed in this case at the expense of Germans, and a phrase Cleese’s alter ego character, the notoriously bigoted Basil Fawlty, made in an episode of Fawlty Towers, an iconic British comedy television show from the 1970s. However, during the first week of the World Cup tournament the friendly German recep-tion for the traveling English football fans seemed to dampen anti-German tensions in the newspapers’ narratives. Indeed, the front page of The Sun reported how the 400,000 English fans who traveled to Germany were treated well under the headline ‘LOVE IS IN THE HERR: England fans best, say Germans’ (The Sun, 17 June 2006). The other theme in the newspaper narratives about Germany during the early stages of the tourna-ment showed a grudging respect for England’s traditional nemesis because it concerned the permutations of English and German results that would enable the two foes to avoid each other in the first knock out round of the tournament.

England expectsShortly after appointing Sven-Göran Eriksson the first foreign manager of the English national football team in 2001, Adam Crozier, the Chief Executive of the English Football Association, made a public declaration that England’s best chances of winning the foot-ball World Cup for the first and only time since 1966, would be in 2006. He claimed this




would be when the then outstanding crop of young English players, or as he referred to them the ‘golden generation’, reached the peak of their athletic prowess. Entering the 2006 World Cup on the back of two successive quarter-final finishes at the 2002 World Cup and the 2004 European Championships, optimism radiated that this time England could win the World Cup.

Set against this high level of expectation several newspapers drew on one of England’s favorite invented historical traditions, Admiral Horatio Nelson’s famous message to the British fleet, from his flagship HMS Victory, before the Battle of Trafalgar was about to start. Although Nelson was killed in the battle by a French sniper, the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 was the decisive naval engagement of the Napoleonic Wars and established naval superiority and dominance for Britain. Nelson’s famous and often quoted inspirational message to his men before the battle was ‘England expects that every man will do his duty’. It is an example of an English invented tradition that has become ingrained in the psyche of English national identity through its frequent use. Prior to the World Cup, sev-eral of the examined newspapers provided images resonating with the Battle of Trafalgar and evoked Nelson’s famous message. The bicentenary of Trafalgar was celebrated in 2005. The image was still fresh as the 2006 World Cup evolved. At the outset of the tour-nament on its front page, the Daily Mail led with a photograph of Nelson’s Column, a monument in Trafalgar Square, London, to commemorate Nelson’s death at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. At the top of Nelson’s Column, the stature of Nelson’s head had an England scarf draped around its neck, and behind Nelson’s Column was the English flag, the Cross of St George. Under the headline ‘England Expects’, sports writer Jamie Mills also noted how ‘. . . the crew of HMS Illustrious lined up on deck to spell out the admi-ral’s famous rally cry: England Expects’ (Daily Mail, 10 June 2006, p. 1). Referring to the English football team, Matt Dickinson also drew on the same invented tradition declaring ‘England expects, and more boldly than ever . . .’ (The Times, 10 June 2006, p. 2).

Throughout the newspaper narratives there were references to English heroic military and political figures such as Admiral Horatio Nelson and Britain’s wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill, as well as sporting figures, particularly players from the 1966 winning team, who provided the imagined community with pronounced sets of signifiers of national identity. This was designed to evoke support for the English national football team by creating an affinity through English national identity by drawing on English historical references almost in a formulaic fashion to resonate with the predomi-nantly English imagined community.

‘1966 and all that’Maguire and Poulton (1999) suggested the English media coverage of the European football championships in 1996 reflected a desire to be able to return to England’s golden age. This theme also resonated through the newspapers’ narratives 10 years later. The narratives focused extensively on nostalgic references of England as the spiritual home of modern football, great past matches and traditions, and the glory of England’s only World Cup win in 1966. English newspaper narratives became anchored in the invented traditions of the past, an era of bygone glories, evoking sleeping memories of English football’s ‘finest hour’. Typifying this, before England’s opening game against Paraguay,



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The Daily Telegraph noted in a headline that it had been ‘14,560 Days Since Bobby Moore Lifted the World Cup’ (The Daily Telegraph, 10 June 2006, p. 1).

There were constant comparisons between the 1966 and the 2006 teams and perfor-mances throughout. Reports about the paucity of English performances in the group stages were laced with hope for improvement. Poor early performances in 2006 were also compared with England’s similar performances in the group stages of the 1966 tour-nament. Typifying this narrative, Maurice Chittenden and John Elliot wrote, ‘Let the party begin! The England team stuttered to a win and brought the country to a standstill yesterday as the nation tasted its first victory in the campaign to replicate the World Cup glory of 1966’ (The Times, 11 June 2006, p. 2). Another aspect of ‘1966 and all that’ for the imagined community was how players from that successful 1966 team such as Alan Ball, Geoff Hurst, and Gordon Banks were often quoted, with expert commentary and opinions about the current players’ performances, and tactics. Additionally, they fre-quently made comparisons and noted similarities between the coaches, players, and con-texts of 1966 and their peers in 2006.

A call to arms – ‘your country needs you’The sheer volume of media coverage of the World Cup is a perfect example of Whannel’s (2002) theory of vortextuality, where the media become temporarily obsessed with one main story. Whannel (2002) described this as ‘during major news stories, . . . in moments of vortextual intensity, columnists and commentators are drawn in, as if by vortex, and even those with no abiding interest in sport are compelled to comment’ (p. 41). During the 2006 World Cup the England national football team was perpetually front-page news. Each newspaper issued rally cries to its readers to generate interest in and galvanize sup-port in the imagined community. In doing this the newspapers were drawing on a shared, collective English national identity, to get behind ‘our’ boys representing ‘In-ger-land’. Typifying this was a poster on the front page of the Daily Mail of England player, Wayne Rooney, dressed in his England shirt, set against a background of the Cross of St George flag, pointing with his right index figure, above a headline that read, ‘Your country needs YOU at 4 pm today’ (Daily Mail, 1 July 2006, front page). This photograph drew on the most famous First World War British army recruitment image. It evoked a ‘sleeping memory’ featuring Lord Kitchener, the Secretary of State for War, rallying the country with a call to arms.

Although the Cross of St George has traditionally been associated with the ethnonation-alist rhetoric of the far right BNP, a sense of resurgent and inclusive English national iden-tity has also manifested itself in the ubiquitous adoption of the Cross of St George flag during recent World Cups. Under the Raise the Flag initiative English supporters at England football matches have held up cards, which together form one large St George Cross flag which also display an anti-racist message (Burdsey, 2008). The Cross of St George flag featured strongly in choreographed photographs of English football players such as Wayne Rooney and David Beckham. In all it provided an atmosphere replete with invented tradi-tions and habitus codes designed to evoke national identity and unity. The images were successful. The Guardian reported 27 percent of English adults bought a Cross of St George flag during the 2006 World Cup (The Guardian, 12 July 2006, p. 19). As King




(2006) noted, football became the contemporary cultural arena where English identity was expressed through symbols. In the first week of the World Cup writer Graham Brough noted how ‘In a nation festooned with red and white St George’s crosses, it is hard to find a corner of England without a patriotic flag flying’ (Daily Mirror, 15 June 2006, p. 6).

The trip to Germany was even caught up in symbolism as hordes of English fans ‘invaded’ Germany to support their country. However, there were few images of England supporters that reflected the heterogeneous or multi-ethnic cultural country England has become. These images of English supporters in Germany were juxtaposed with photo-graphs of the empty streets, motorways and shops, as England focused solely on its matches. These photographs played increasingly on the emotional resonance football fans felt as their national football team competed in the World Cup.

English character – the lionheart spiritThe lionheart spirit has its origins in King Richard I, ‘the Lionheart’, who earned the accolade after his military exploits during the Third Crusade in the 12th century. The heraldic emblem of Richard I featured three lions. Centuries later drawing on this imag-ery, the Football Association (FA) adopted the three lions logo, prominently displayed on the front of the English shirt. The lionheart has become synonymous with English patrio-tism (Crolley and Hand, 2006). The symbolism of the three lions became very popular in 1996 when England hosted the European Championships and Broudie, Skinner, and Baddiel’s popular song ‘Three Lions (Football’s Coming Home)’ became the English supporters’ anthem for the tournament. The three lions logo has since featured heavily in the FA’s marketing and promotional developments in the last decade (Carrington, 1999). References to the invented tradition of the English lionheart spirit resonated throughout. For example, before their first game, the Daily Mirror headlined ‘Let’s Roar!: The Hearts of Our Nation are with You’, and Jeremy Armstrong declared ‘Come on England! The pride is evident as David Beckham tugs at his shirt and shows off the Three Lions ahead of today’s clash with Paraguay’ (Daily Mirror, 10 June 2006, p. 1). Similarly under the headline, ‘IT’S THE BIG ONE: Hero Wayne ready to roar’, author Nick Parker reported that before their quarter-final game against Portugal, ‘England lionheart Wayne Rooney is fired up and ready to roar’ (The Sun, 1 July 2006, p. 2).

Early mediocre performances by the England team inspired the press to draw on tradi-tional English stereotypes featuring the fighting spirit, courage, pride, determination, and the lionheart spirit, all strongly identified with English persona. Again they draw on the shared identity of the English imagined community in the newspapers’ narratives (Crolley and Hand, 2006). Henry Winter in commenting on an English training session assured his read-ers ‘Even a simple game of one-touch possession work was contested with gladiatorial zeal. When Terry and company run into Ecuador amid equatorial heat in Stuttgart on Sunday, their bodies may wilt, but not their hearts’ (The Daily Telegraph, 23 June 2006, p. s2).

Fair playSporting ethos and fair play resonate throughout the history of the modern game of foot-ball in England (Giulianotti, 1999). Fair play has also been one of the defining features of English sporting national identity. It is normally reflected in the ‘us-them’ invective in



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which foreign players’ tendency to feign fouls and injury, and provoke English players into retaliation is noted in pejorative language (Crolley and Hand, 2006). Thus, the English value of fairness is frequently constructed in opposition to the professional play-acting, feigning injury, and diving of foreign players. This theme was identified in many of the newspapers. The News of the World, The Sun’s Sunday newspaper is known for an anti-European or ‘Little Englander’ discourse, and true to this ideology one of its head-lines stated, ‘BEWARE THE CHEATS: England’s opponents will use dirty tricks warns Owen’. Rob Beasley wrote of England striker Michael Owen’s concern that England’s opponents would ‘use shameful tricks’ to win. Owen was quoted: ‘As a nation we are very honest. We try to win the right way. We are brave, we’re courageous and I don’t think a lot of teams enjoy playing us – but England aren’t as streetwise as plenty of other countries’ (News of the World, 11 June 2006, front page).

This theme also reoccurred in an ‘us vs them’ invective after England lost in the quar-ter-final against Portugal on a penalty shootout after the game finished in a draw after regulation and overtime. England’s Wayne Rooney was sent off after stamping on a Portuguese player. His Manchester United teammate, Cristiano Ronaldo, a star for the Portuguese squad, complained vehemently to the referee, and then was caught by a cam-era winking to the Portuguese bench after Rooney was sent off. Columnist Simon Barnes, commented ‘Wink, wink, and be a villain; Ronaldo took the archetype of the insufferable prima donna footballer to new levels as he winked, clearly and unambiguously, at the Portugal bench after he secured Rooney’s sending off” (The Times, 6 July 2006, p. 75). Drawing on negative stereotypes about Latino football players the ‘us vs them’ invective continued, ‘The Portuguese were an insufferable lot even before the Rooney-Ronaldo incident. Every bit of niggling, diving, faking, and whinging had been indulged in, every aspect of Latin football that most grates on the English psyche’ (The Times, 6 July 2006, p. 75). The Sun’s response was to make a cutout human dartboard making ‘nancy boy’ Ronaldo’s wink the bulls-eye, inviting every England fan to ‘put it up in your office – and give the sly senor one in the eye’ (The Sun, 3 July 2006, p. 5). The last quote indicates how in addition to ethnic slurs about Latino footballers, Ronaldo, whose relationships with female models had received exhaustive coverage in The Sun, was described as a ‘nancy boy’, an English slang expression for an effeminate or homosexual man.

‘Cry ‘‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!’”A common theme in the English newspapers’ narratives was how habitus codes were rein-forced as matches were placed in the socio-historical context of great battles and wars from English tradition and mythology. At the outset of the tournament, The Sun, under the headline ‘We’ll fight them on the mobiles’, paraphrased Churchill’s famous Second World War speech ‘we’ll fight them on the beaches’. It invited patriotic England supporters to download rallying calls by Sir Winston Churchill on their mobile telephones (The Sun, 10 June 2006, p. 2). To counter English hooliganism, one of the worst forms of violent English patriotism, English actor Ray Winstone had traveled to Germany to represent the Football Association’s Alltogethernow campaign, especially designed to promote good behavior by the England supporters. But Winstone also recorded motivational messages for the England team quoting from Churchill’s wartime oratory and famous Shakespearean lines from the Siege of Harfleur and Battle of Agincourt. The Battle of Agincourt (1415)




evoked sleeping memories of a famous English victory that Henry V secured against a larger French army through adroit use of the longbow. According to The Sun, Ray Winstone’s ‘. . . rousing pre-match speech’ was played in the dressing room before the Portugal match. Winstone was shown in a ‘mock-up’ photograph as Winston Churchill, and was quoted encouraging support for the English team in an ‘us vs them’ narrative. ‘‘‘We have a duty to keep backing them. We’re all English together and the players have a pride and passion to win the World Cup for England’” (The Sun, 30 June 2006, p. 5).

Owen Hargreaves – ‘one of ours?’Owen Hargreaves is the epitome of the modern diasporic professional football player. He was born in Canada, where his English father worked in the steel industry. As a youth player in Canada, his talent was recognized by one of Europe’s leading teams, German club Bayern Munich, where he went on to carve out a successful career. Through family lineage he was eligible to play for any of the UK nations (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, or Wales), as well as Canada. In 2000 he was about to make his debut for the Wales U21 team, but he withdrew when he learned that England U21’s were interested in him. He went on to play for England’s U21 side before making numerous appearances for the full England national side. This gave him the distinction of playing for the English national team even though he had never lived or played football in England (King, 2006). He was selected for the England squads that made consecutive quarterfinal appearances in the 2002 World Cup and the 2004 European Championships. This resonated in the narratives as Simon Barnes noted he is ‘. . . not one of ours, not in the conventional sense’ (The Times, 28 June 2006, p. 5). Instead Hargreaves sporting transnationalization was widely questioned as being ‘un-English’ (King, 2006).

In the build-up to the 2006 World Cup, given his diasporic background, Hargreaves selection prompted criticism from England supporters and journalists alike. The ‘us vs them’ narrative drew on the parochial ‘Little Englander’ mentality. The implication that ‘he is not one of ours’ was promulgated in the narratives with references to his Canadian accent and ability to speak fluent German, the country where he plied his trade. In addi-tion, the narratives noted how, as a defensive, holding, central midfield player known for his ball-winning ability and high-work rate, Hargreaves was often brought on by another foreigner, Swedish Manager Sven-Göran Eriksson, as a substitute in the last 20 minutes of a game when England was narrowly winning. This was a defensive measure to contain the opposition and hold onto a slender advantage. Thus, as Simon Barnes reported ‘Hargreaves is seen as an embodiment of Eriksson’s caution; if you like, of Eriksson’s God-damned boringness. Hargreaves’ own quasi-foreignness makes him an obvious ally here’ (The Times, 28 June 2006, p. 5).

Many of the newspapers reported the tensions created when England supporters booed Hargreaves when he came on as a second-half substitute to perform a contain-ing role when England was winning 1–0 against Paraguay in their first game. Sports writer Matt Dickinson noted England captain David Beckham’s ‘disgusted’ response to the booing (The Times, 14 June 2006, p. 2). However, as the tournament progressed Hargreaves demonstrated his utility, playing different positions as needed to such good effect that the narratives acknowledged his contribution to the England cause.



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Jeff Powell noted how ‘Owen Hargreaves worked himself into the ground’ after Wayne Rooney had been sent off against Portugal (Daily Mail, 3 July 2006, p. 75). Hargreaves, who was the only English player to score in the penalty shootout against Portugal, was voted England’s man of the match in the quarter-final loss to Portugal. His transforma-tion to becoming ‘one of ours’ was complete when through his performances he won both England Player of the Year and England Player of the World Cup in official Football Association polls.

Sven-Göran Eriksson – the last hurrahDrawing on a case study of Jose Mourinho and Sven-Göran Eriksson, Wagg (2007) asserted that effectiveness of football managers (coaches) has become the single most important determinant in explaining the outcome of important matches. As such, Wagg noted that in the celebrity culture of football, elite managers have become mythical figures and global celebrities. Sven-Göran Eriksson became the first foreign manager of the English national football team in 2001, in the aftermath of Kevin Keegan’s abrupt resignation after a run of mediocre results threatened England’s chances of qualifying for the 2002 World Cup finals (King, 2006). After initial successes, including a 5–1 victory over arch nemesis Germany on route to qualifying for the 2002 finals, Eriksson steered England to the quarter-final stages of both the 2002 World Cup and 2004 European Cup finals, engendering hopes that England could eclipse that record with the ‘greatest generation’ in the 2006 World Cup. However, in 2004 Eriksson’s affair with Faria Alam, a female secretary at the Football Association, became front-page news. Also in the year preceding the 2006 World Cup finals, a tabloid journalist disguised as a rich Sheik had embarrassingly duped Eriksson. The fake Sheik presented himself as interested in buying a major English Premier League club. He tricked Eriksson into revealing his intent to quit as England manager after the 2006 World Cup, as well as embarrassing revelations about English national team players, which were subsequently published under lurid and sensationalist headlines in many popular English newspa-pers. After this episode Eriksson and his employers, the Football Association (FA), ‘mutually agreed’ that Eriksson would step down as England manager after the 2006 World Cup (BBC Sport Website, 2006).

Previous England football managers had always been subject to enormous critical scrutiny by the popular press. Bobby Robson, who managed the England team that reached the semi-final of the 1990 World Cup, was infamously referred to as a ‘plonker’ (a colloquialism for penis). Infamously, The Sun likened the face of his successor Graham Taylor to a turnip after England lost to Sweden in the 1992 European Championships. Thus, at the outset of the 2006 tournament, with expectations extremely high, the news-papers’ narratives noted that if Eriksson could steer England to success he would become ‘one of us’. However, the price for failing to live up to the high expectations was vindic-tive and vitriolic ridicule. Eriksson, a highly accomplished and experienced coach knew this, and acknowledged it, when replying to the question by Henry Winter about ‘. . . whether he would accept an honorary knighthood should he emulate Alf Ramsey and guide the Boys of 2006 to World Cup glory. “‘I just hope to leave the job alive,’’ Eriksson laughed’ (The Daily Telegraph, 10 June 2006).




The enemy within

Nairn (1988) noted the English ‘national aversion to theory’ in favor of more pragmatic approaches (p. 92). The cerebral, calm, and clinical managerial style of Eriksson seemed to stand in stark contrast to the values and criteria the journalists seemed to use to evalu-ate the English teams’ performances. English football team performances were critiqued on their conformance with preferred English myths, such as honest endeavor, commit-ment, fighting spirit, work-rate, and courage in the face of adversity. The 2006 English team’s tepid, languid performances and their failure to live up to the English myths in their early games predictably resulted in pejorative narratives. Although the players were not immune from criticism, Eriksson was largely blamed in narratives, which drew on negative Swedish stereotypes and were tinged with xenophobia.

O’Donnell (1994) concluded that the format of international sport, which pits one nation against another, provides the perfect environment for nations to ‘. . . act out their preferred myths through self-and other-stereotypes, and celebrate those qualities in which, . . . in short make them superior’ (p. 353). Scandinavian/Swedish stereotypes – with their cool, clinical, and calculating rationality – can also be expressed negatively as lacking emotion, dynamism, a tendency to be boring, taciturnity, and communicating in a mono-tone voice (Crolley et al., 2000). These negative Swedish stereotypes were pervasive throughout newspaper narratives about Eriksson, who was derided throughout the tourna-ment for his ‘conservative reputation’, and his ‘labyrinthine tactics’ (The Daily Telegraph, 25 June 2006, p. s4). They noted: ‘the man from a nation fabled for their diplomats usually chose the line of least resistance’ (The Daily Telegraph, 3 July 2006, p. s2). He was described as ‘passionless’ (Daily Mirror, 2 July 2006, p. 2), ‘. . . the master of monochrome and caution’ (The Daily Telegraph, 27 June 2006, p. s4), a ‘. . . gormless Swede’ (The Sun, 24 June 2006, p. 12), as having ‘. . . the demeanor of a librarian’ (The Times, 27 June 2006, p. 3), and criticized for his ‘insouciance’ (The Daily Telegraph, 1 July 2006, p. s15).

The press drew damaging comparisons between Eriksson and former British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain. It was Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement in dealing with an aggressive Nazi Germany before the outbreak of the Second World War that drew their ire. Another reference to the Swede’s taciturn nature was a comparison with Reginald Perrin, a dour but iconic comedic character on British television. Martin Johnson wrote:

There is an ever increasing suspicion that England are being managed by a reincarnation of Reginald Perrin, the television character who deliberately set out to manufacture totally useless items . . ., and ended up a millionaire . . . Sven’s trance-like state . . . is something that comes naturally to him . . . ‘I am rather happy we won the game,’ he said afterwards, upon being invited to comment on the captain vomiting all over his pitch, Sven said; ‘He didn’t feel very well.’ Query the man’s tactics by all means, but never his passion. (The Daily Telegraph, 27 June 2006, p. s7).

In addition to evoking negative Swedish stereotypes, this narrative drew on sleeping memories from British popular television culture, to suggest that Eriksson was not worth his high remuneration package. This also became a contentious issue in the aftermath of England’s elimination, when the Daily Mirror used colloquial language in its headline



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‘£25 million for sweet FA. Eriksson’s men went close . . . but he wasted our golden generation and totally failed to justify his salary’ (The Daily Mirror, 2 July 2006, p. 60).

You don’t know what you’re doingThis popular chant of frustrated football supporters unimpressed by managerial perfor-mance reveals the challenges and vagaries of being a manager/coach, and resonated through the newspapers’ narratives about Eriksson. After England’s poor performance in beating Paraguay 1–0 in their opening game Steven Howard reported how one loyal England fan ‘asked the question many of us have been debating for the last four years. “‘Have we got a ****ing manager or what?’” (The Sun, 12 June 2006, p. 4).

Eriksson’s lack of emotion was unfavorably compared with the personality of his nemesis, Portugal manager Luiz Felipe Scolari, before their quarter-final match. It had been reported that Scolari had been offered the England manager’s job in the aftermath of the fake Sheik episode. Concern was also expressed throughout the newspaper narra-tives about who would provide the inspirational leadership needed given Eriksson’s natural inclination to diffidence. Former England international player, Alan Smith asked, ‘. . . under Sven-Göran Eriksson’s restrained stewardship. If the serene Swede doesn’t get worked up, who takes it on themselves to rally the lads?’ and suggested that ‘Gary Neville’s vast experience and ability to deliver inspiring Churchillian addresses should come in very handy just before kick-off’ (The Daily Telegraph, 30 June 2006, p. s8). Prior to the Portugal match, writer Paul Hayward hoped the English soccer team would take inspiration from the England rugby team’s success in winning the World Cup. He quoted former England rugby captain Martin Johnson’s inspirational dressing room speech before their Grand Slam decider in 2003, ‘Turn them over. Smash ’em. Simple as that. Relish this game. Relish it. Shut their crowd up, shut their players up. Win the match’ (Daily Mail, 30 June 2006, p. 95).

Goodbye tosserSomewhat predictably, English sports writers coped with bitter defeat by arch nemesis Portugal – as though it was generally deemed unacceptable for foreigners to beat us at our own game – by blaming the foreigner, Sven-Göran Eriksson. The xenophobic vitri-olic abuse hurled at the Swede conforms with Elias’s (1996) theory about how the ‘dreams of nations’ in decline can be dangerous when there is a disconnect between the nation’s actual status and the outdated elevated perception of a country in the minds of its citizens, which is expressed in a discourse of the ‘fantasy shield’ of their imagined charisma (p. xiii). As though acknowledging this Tom Dart noted that Eriksson ‘. . . led a country with a superiority complex into a miasma of mediocrity’ (The Times, 27 June 2006, p. 3). One of the more constrained narratives by Henry Winter appears below:

The Swede was derided in certain quarters on the grounds of his nationality, an issue he found exasperating. ‘I’ve been in many other countries working and I have never been accused of being a Swede anywhere else but here,’ Eriksson said. His passport was not the problem, simply




his expression of passion. A cold herring, Eriksson never seemed to understand the immense zeal for the national team . . . and the feeling of utter despair when the Three Lions fail. (The Daily Telegraph, 3 July 2006, p. s2)

Tom Bower’s more direct lexis typified the vitriol found in the popular newspapers. Under the headline, ‘A greedy, disloyal, no-talent snake-oil saleman-why did the FA give Sven 35 million?’, Bower wrote, ‘Eriksson has for the past four years looked like a phoney and acted like a phoney but everyone in the FA wanted to ignore the inevitable conclusion’ (Daily Mail, 2 July 2006, p. 6). Predictably, The Sun headlined with ‘End of an error: GOODBYE TOSSER. He tossed away our cash, tossed away out talent . . . now he’s tossed away our World Cup dreams’ (The Sun, 3 July 2006, front page). Jeff Powell concluded:

The most disgracefully prepared team in England’s World Cup history was managed by a money-grabbing charlatan . . . all Sven Göran Eriksson deserves is to go back up his fjord to the land of winter darkness, hammer throwers and sexual promiscuity from where he came. We’ve sold our birthright down the fjord to a nation of seven million skiers and hammer throwers who spend half their lives in darkness. (Daily Mail, Monday 3 July, 2006)

In stark contrast to the xenophobic abuse reserved for the foreigner, Eriksson, although not immune from criticism, Hugh McIlvanney described the England players that lost to Portugal as:

The beleaguered 10 men battled as if every nerve and sinew had been reinforced by the extracts of Henry V with which actor Ray Winstone is reported to have stirred them ahead of this quarter-final and they looked as likely as Portugal to settle the tie without recourse to penalties. (The Daily Telegraph, 2 July 2006, front page of sports section)

The notable reference to Kipling’s poem If (‘every nerve and sinew’) illustrates how the journalists portrayed England players as ‘patriots at play’ in the invented traditions of British imperialism. In the aftermath of England’s loss to Portugal in the quarter-final, Paul Hayward desolately drew on a phrase associated with Winston Churchill, popular-ized by Martin Gilbert’s book, Churchill: The Wilderness Years, which chronicled Churchill’s life in the decade before the Second World War, when he lost his Cabinet position and was politically marginalized. Hayward noted how England ‘. . . are hurtling towards a half-century of wilderness years’ (Daily Mail, 3 July 2006, p. 78).

Summary and discussionThe official slogan of the 2006 World Cup held in Germany was ‘a time to make friends’. However, in stark contrast to making friends, English newspapers of that time did almost the opposite, emphasizing the patriotic nature of international sport by galvanizing and naturalizing support for the English national football team in an ‘us vs them’ invective. In doing so they drew extensively on invented traditions and through evoking sleeping memories drawn from English history. Their narratives were replete with references to past military successes and famous English generals and statesmen. Their aim was to



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rekindle images of the ‘special charisma’ of England’s glorious mythological past when ‘Britannia ruled the waves’. As they did, they provided their readers a ‘fantasy shield’ to cement and unify national sentiment for the imagined community. Perryman (2008) noted how affiliations with English national identity through the English national foot-ball team in particular ‘. . . offers one the opportunity to become a collective noun again – a ‘‘we’’ where most of the time ‘‘me’’ is our lot’ (p. 14). The pronouns ‘I/we’ was often used to invoke the shared sense of the English national identity. As Anderson (1983) noted the ‘we’ rekindles and reminds readers that they are part of an imagined commu-nity of ‘olde England’ as they read the newspapers and watch games.

Generally, the findings in this study support previous research examining newspaper discourses about the English national soccer team over the last decade (Maguire and Poulton, 1999; Maguire et al., 1999a, 1999b). Despite the friendly German reception for the 400,000 ‘invading’ English supporters, several narratives, particularly in the popular newspapers, barely moved beyond the shadow of the Second World War, couching their xenophobic headlines in puns evoking negative German stereotypes. In the angst-ridden disappointment expressed about England’s underachieving football team, several popu-lar newspapers’ narratives expressed a collective sense of national relief that at least England’s traditional rival, who were derided for being Teutonically efficient, but boring, also failed to win the World Cup they hosted. However, the inflammatory ‘Let’s Blitz Fritz’ rhetoric used in Euro 96 was not seen. It is notable that this, even by contemporary newspaper standards, was deemed too adversarial. It is also possible that England’s lan-guid performances in the early rounds and the draw, which did not pit England against an arch rival until the quarter-final match against Portugal, explains the general lack of martial and military metaphors.

The results suggest the media accounts of the English national football team seem to reflect a strong sense of an essentialized English national identity in the face of other local, urban, regional, and supranational identities that have resulted from globalization. It might be argued that a heightened, homogenous sense of English national identity in the newspapers’ narratives during the 2006 World Cup might be a defense mechanism against the realities of devolution within the United Kingdom, and the Europeanization and globalization, now associated with the EPL. At special times like the World Cup, newspapers’ seek to rekindle the habitus codes of the past in efforts to recreate the atmo-sphere and feeling of the 1966 triumph. The strength of the ‘us vs them’ invective employed in narratives about England’s opponents, particularly Portugal, and against Sven-Göran Eriksson also serves to illustrate this point. Evoking memories of ‘1966 and all that’ illustrates, in the sense first articulated by Roland Barthes, the way the media draw on myths to recreate the national identities constructed in past eras.

The newspaper narratives analyzed reflected not just national history. They served to proactively reinforce and promote identification with the English nation as the dominant form of cultural identity (Crolley et al., 2000; Tomlinson, 1991). The narratives seemed designed to re-invent England as the core shared culture of ‘olde England’. They did not reflect the modern reality of the heterogeneous England that is apparent today. Instead the newspaper narratives seemed to rely on a reductionist, essentialist construction of traditional England that would be at the heart of fan support for the national football team. Men who represent their county in sport should ideally epitomize the national




character and identity (Bruce, 2008; Maguire, 1999). Researchers have concluded that male athletes representing their national team in any sport become ‘embodiments of nations’ and ‘patriots at play’ in media accounts (Maguire and Poulton, 1999; Tuck, 2003a, 2003b). The portrayal of English players as ‘patriots at play’ was a consistent theme found in this research specifically targeted at the dominant ideology about English national identity. Though there were often xenophobic tones in some of the narratives, one decade after the infamous ‘Blitz Fritz’ headlines of Euro 96, it seems that the more things change the more they stay the same. Thus, Rowe et al.’s (1998) call for ‘. . . sports media to recast their regimented images of sporting citizens and represent them in all their chaotic, hybridic diversity’ (p. 133) still seems pertinent.

Finally, reflecting a general trend of the proletarianization of culture in general, Boyle (2006) suggested there has been a blurring between English broadsheet and the popular newspapers in the last decade. However, although the same themes were found in most of the newspapers examined in this study, the emphasis given to lurid, sensational sto-ries, and celebrity culture was much greater in the popular, redtop newspapers. We noted differences in the language used in the broadsheet and popular newspapers. The popular newspapers’ devoted an enormous amount of coverage to the English players’ wives and girlfriends (WAGS), who had accompanied their husbands and boyfriends to Germany. The acute, colloquial styles, direct lexis, and skillful use of puns, particularly in the head-lines, all stood out in the coverage of the popular newspapers, The Sun and the Daily Mirror, and caught the sense of national humiliation, angst, and the anger about not reproducing England’s glorious past in the present. Times change, but history does not.

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for providing constructive feedback and editorial suggestions on an earlier draft of this article.

Notes

1. The United Kingdom of Great Britain, which consists of England, Scotland, and Wales, was formed in the Treaty of the Union in 1707. In 1800 Great Britain was united with Ireland to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1921 the Irish Free State separated from the United Kingdom and under the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act in 1927 the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland was created. Thus, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland consists of England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Throughout much of the 20th century the terms British and English were synonymous, although gradually in the 1990s a post-British consciousness evolved (Crolley and Hand, 2006). International football exacerbates the inherent contradictions and tensions of the 300-year union because England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales each have a national team. Indeed, both Wales and Northern Ireland were in England’s World Cup qualifying group and were eliminated in the qualifying stages from the 2006 World Cup finals. Scotland, which competed in a different qualifying group, also did not qualify for the 2006 World Cup finals tournament. Thus, England was the only country from the home nations of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to compete in the 2006 World Cup finals.



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2. Traditionally, as Gilroy noted in the early 1990s ‘to speak of the British or English people is to speak of the white people’ (1993: 28). However, more recently as Kymlicka (2000) suggested, being British invokes images of cosmopolitan diversity and values of cultural hybridity, whereas being English, which used to be more interchangeable with being British before devolution, still seems to connote shared myths about descent, culture, tradition, and history, and as such can be a White racial signifier.

3. The history of English football is permeated with racism. Although not eradicated, blatant incidences of racist abuse have become increasingly socially unacceptable. Concerted campaigns to eliminate racism such as the ‘Kick Racism Out of Football’ campaign have been introduced and received the wholehearted support from English governing bodies and the majority of football supporters. However in 2004, a so-called friendly international against Spain, played in the Santiago Bernabeu stadium in Madrid, was marred when two English Black players, Shaun Wright-Phillips and Ashley Cole, were subjected to racist abuse from Spanish supporters. The England team arrived in Spain before the game wearing anti-racism t-shirts in response to an earlier incident in which Spanish coach, Luis Aragones, called the Arsenal striker Thierry Henry a ‘Black shit’.

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