England Won't Win This Tournament

The World Cup. Sometimes hard to process.

To celebrate the 1982 World Cup, our third-year-infants teacher instructed us to create life-size cutouts of our favourite footballers, which she would stick up on the classroom wall.

I lay out on a giant piece of sugar paper, and my mate Ollie drew around me with a pencil. Then we cut out the shape with scissors. We were West Ham supporters, as was our mate Alex, who worked on the project with us. We decided that the player would be Trevor Brooking, and we would paint his kit claret and blue. Only we didn’t have claret paint. Alex and Ollie insisted that we should just use red instead. I suggested that a dark purple might be better. We had an argument about it, and the teacher, Mrs Taylor, intervened. She sided with Ollie and Alex and threw me off the project entirely. I was seven years old. I still hate Mrs Taylor for doing that. I haven’t seen Alex in decades. I still have lunch with Ollie at least once a week. We are both 51.

To prepare for matches during the 1986 World Cup in Mexico, I would kick a ball against the wall in front of our house. The road was very narrow. I had about five square feet to play in. If I could hit the ball first time against the wall, three times in a row, it would count as a goal for England. Three misses in a row counted as a goal for Portugal, who we were playing in the first match.

Terry, our neighbour, was a very quiet man. He would pull up in his car after work and see me kicking the ball. The most I ever got out of him was a nod and a grunt. But on the day of the Portugal match in June 1986, he stopped to ask me what I thought the score would be. I was nervous and honoured to have been asked. Terry was casting off his taciturn persona because this was a special occasion. “We will thrash them,” I said. Terry laughed and went inside.

We lost one-nil. I wasn’t so much gutted as confused. I had played out the games in my head - and against the wall - several times. I had been pretty certain that we would win all our matches comfortably. Football had yet to beat cynicism and despair into me.

My ordinarily boring life was never boring during the summer of 1986. I read match reports in the paper and on Teletext. I stuck stickers in my Panini album. I played chaotic World Cup games in the playground, in which we would all nominate ourselves as our favourite stars. I always wanted to be Michael Laudrup. I remember my mate William gliding across the concrete, a tennis ball at his feet, shouting “Josimar!” every time he jinked past another defender.

At home, I usually spent a great deal of time alone. I had three older brothers who were out and about with their mates most of the time. My mum was at work a lot. I spent long hours after school idling about our little house, talking to the dog, eating biscuits and watching soap operas. But when the World Cup started, everyone would get together for the big games. The house would be alive with laughter, shouting, friends and family. The sound of beer cans being cracked open. The thick cigarette smoke that filled the living room. A large plate of my mum’s sandwiches on the table at half time. Magic.

For the infamous semi-final against Argentina, my dad picked me up and took me to my uncle’s house in Chorleywood. I was so nervous at this stage of the tournament that I could hardly speak. While my dad and uncle shouted, laughed and marvelled at Maradona’s antics, I sat silently, wringing my hands. When Maradona scored with his hand, I went out into the garden on my own, fighting back tears. I wasn’t sure if I could handle watching any more of the game. After kicking a ball around for a while, I built up the strength to go back inside. ‘‘We’re two-nil down,” my uncle said when I walked in the room. “Maradona just scored the best goal of all time.”

My dad and his brother made a big deal out of disliking England and wanting them to lose. I think it made them feel clever and sophisticated. It made me fucking furious. I just wanted to go home and cry in my room.

By the time the next World Cup came around, I was a different person. Four years is the blink of an eye now, but back then, the gap between 11 and 15 was like an entire ice age.

Somewhere along the line, I had developed a certain self-confidence. Just before Italia 90, I had landed the lead role in the school play. I wasn’t much of an actor, but I was a world-class showoff. The appeal of the play wasn’t about performance, though; it was about spending time with all the girls who were doing GCSE drama. We would rehearse, then go out to the park and drink cans on the swings. Then I would go home and watch the matches with my mates or my brothers. It was the best summer of my life.

England’s final group match was against Egypt, and we needed to win to qualify. The game took place during the school play's final performance. We had a TV set in the shared dressing room. I was late on stage for every one of my scenes that night.

Eventually, Mark Wright scored a header. In the following scene, one of my castmates went off script and ad-libbed an announcement of the score. The dads in the audience went mental. The show had to stop for a moment. The drama teacher was livid.

That night, I asked out one of the drama GCSE girls, and she said yes. We kissed in a phone box on the way home. England were in the knockout stages, and I suddenly had a girlfriend.

Every time I see a picture of Ciao, the weird stick man with a football head who served as Italia 90’s mascot, I feel small echoes of the euphoria that shone inside me that whole summer.

In the next round, against Belgium, my dad was at it again. We’d gone to his flat to watch the game. He was moaning about how stupid Bobby Robson was, how overrated Gary Lineker was, how elegant the Belgians were. This went on for over 100 excruciating minutes. Until David Platt scored his sublime, last-gasp, pirouette volley. My brothers and I jumped into a heap of celebration in my dad’s front room, swaddled in the Union Jack we had brought with us. When we looked up from the bundle, I saw my dad punching the air and saying, “We’ve done it!” We all smiled at him, and he quickly gathered himself, sat back down and shrugged with faux indifference.

Me, my brother (L), my mum (R) and my kids, feeling a bit Englandy in 2024

Today, I am putting up my World Cup wall chart and England flag in the front room. I said I’d wait for my son to finish school so we could do it together. He says he has some Blu-Tac in his room. The sweepstake is arranged. The score predictions are done. The retro England shirts have been purchased from Vinted.

My son reckons he is going to stay up for every single game, most of which happen in the middle of the night. He says he will catch up on sleep by taking naps during the day. It’s a fucking stupid plan. But this is effectively his Italia 90. He has to make his own mistakes.

England won’t win this tournament, but that doesn’t matter. Nothing that happens on the pitch matters as much as the stuff that happens around the tournament. Ollie and I will get together for some games. Will I finally address the spat we had over the paint in 1982? Perhaps. I feel as if I am still chasing some closure.

I’ll watch some games with my old man, too. I hope he doesn’t suddenly develop some late-life patriotism. It will somehow ruin all the fun.