I’m not into football – but there is just something about this England team

Confession: I’ve never been “into football”. In fact, the keenest I’ve ever been on the sport was about 25 years ago, when my friends and I would tell our parents we “had” to stay after school until 5pm. What we were really doing was watching the boys in the year above knock a ball about on the grass, and swooning, and making eyes at them from the benches. It was a hot and heady and lust-filled summer, the summer of Euro 96.

And I may not know much about football, but I do remember that desolate semi-final – mainly because we were all at a birthday party at the local cricket club, and I desperately wanted to snog the boy who, when Gareth Southgate missed his penalty against Germany, burst into tears and didn’t stop sobbing until the night ended. That same boy later wrote to Southgate and told him he was a “hero” anyway and that he’d played well and that he loved him. Southgate wrote back, of course, because even the most lacklustre fans now understand what a decent man he is – he’d come round to bleed your radiator, just to help you out, and we all know it.

But I’ve never really understood the importance or impact of the “beautiful game” – something I put down in part to being raised in a family completely disinterested in sport: my dad claims he once asked for Sky Sports to be taken off his TV package, because no one was ever going to watch it.

That’s despite the fact that those around me have loved and lived football; and, growing up in Essex, Premier League footballers were part of the local tapestry – I regularly spotted Teddy Sheringham filling his car up at the petrol station at the top of my road; used to see Frank Lampard drinking in the local pub. I had a friend who was dating John Terry; I would walk past Sol Campbell’s house on my way to school; I even babysat Dean Holdsworth’s kids (he played for Wimbledon, and once introduced me to Vinnie Jones, though I had no real idea who he was, at the time). And so it goes on.

Yet, when England played Denmark on Wednesday night – and beat them 2-1 – something strange happened. For the first time in my adult life, I... felt it.

It’d never been in any question that I’d watch the game, despite the fact that I had a poet friend visiting from Cumbria, who was (seemingly) equally disinterested. But it seemed important to show some enthusiasm and join in: for one, there was an element of Fomo – not surprising when you consider that England’s historic victory was watched by 25.8 million viewers on ITV, the biggest audience of the tournament so far, and the biggest peak football audience ever for a single channel. It also felt crucial that we show support for the national side – particularly after the past 16 months, when we’ve pulled together as a nation in so many other ways: staying locked down, wearing masks, clapping for the NHS.

And so, we got food in and settled down and I watched the whole game without getting distracted and wandering off – probably for the first time in my life – and it was brilliant.

We felt we had a fairly rudimentary understanding of the rules – though there was some confusion over why they kept going to extra time (and neither of us really “got” the way Harry Kane was able to shoot twice, after missing the penalty the first time). We also had a very confusing discussion about what we decided was “a golden goal”, which we thought meant whoever got the next goal would automatically win the entire game (as it turned out, this was fake news, and did not happen).

But we were absolutely caught up in the collective fervour of it all – and when England scored, I found myself instinctively punching the air. I did. I did that. This has never, ever happened to me before.

I also found myself sobbing at 8am the next morning in Pret a Manger at the footage of Mason Mount giving his shirt to a young supporter; and welling up when I saw a tweet by Jordan Henderson, expressing support for an LGBT+ fan. I got teary reading Raheem Sterling’s missive, “It was all a dream”, which he dedicated to his mother, Nadine. “If anybody deserves to be happy, it’s my mum,” he wrote. “She came to this country with nothing and put herself through school cleaning bathrooms and changing bed sheets, and now she’s the director of a nursing home. And her son plays for England.”

There’s just something about this particular team – at this particular point in time, in this particular competition – that has managed to warm the hearts of even the most apathetic enthusiasts: people like me, who would usually say outright that we’re “not into football”, who would never ever choose to go and watch a game, who don’t fully understand the rules or the complexities or the passion it can stir. It’s united the nation and whipped up even the most ardent of non-believers. We needed this.

Euro 2020 has pulled us all together – and it’s beautiful. I can’t wait for the final.