There was a lot of talk
on Five Live last night about whether there is broadening sense of apathy
toward the England football team from the general public.
While Wembley crowd
numbers remain ridiculously strong, viewing figures for the Slovenia game were
less than half of that for the Great British Bake Off the evening after, and it
was was the same story with the figures for the Malta match versus The X Factor.
Paired with this was
anecdotal evidence from texters to the radio show, saying they didn’t watch the
Slovenia game, their little sons didn’t want to watch the game or ask for the
score and so on. Thinking about it, I had the first half on while I was doing
other things around the house, turned it off to read instead(!) and then
watched the last quarter of an hour.
All of this seems to add
up to a lower level of public interest. Putting this in to context though,
about 5m people still watched the Slovenia game which is roughly a tenth of
England’s population. And I can always recall there being a level of disconnect
between England’s fans and its football team in the aftermath of disappointing
major championship exits.
But this feels on
another level – losing to Iceland rather than a Portugal or Germany at a major
championship, the Sam Allardyce fiasco and seemingly never-ending listless
performances all contributing.
Ignorant booing and
social media abuse of Wayne Rooney aside, the passion seems dimmed.
However, is this truly a
bad thing?
Many reasons have been
put forward for England’s underachievement at international level – indulged
players, lack of English footballers in the Premier League, those English
players in the Premier League being made to look good by their foreign
counterparts, managers aren’t good enough, tactically inflexible, youth systems
aren’t producing and so on and on and on and on.
Another theory is the
amount of pressure and expectation on England to not only win but also win playing
in an attractive manner, especially against ‘smaller’ footballing nations. This
comes from both the media and the public, especially with the all-consuming
power of social media, with where it all starts rather unclear (though I
suspect it is more social media-led now).
It appears to be
self-perpetuating as the longer England go without winning a major tournament,
the greater the burden – 30 years of hurt has quickly become 50. Nowhere could
this been seen more than that night in Nice when English players seemed
incapable of passing the ball 10 yards without it winding up at the feet of an
Icelander.
But what if continued
and enhanced public apathy towards the England national football team gradually
reduces the pressure to the extent players do not wilt when wearing the England
shirt? What if they feel unshackled and can play their natural games?
There was an element of
this in the Euro 2016 qualifying campaign under Roy Hodgson where wins were
picked like ripe fruit and no-one really had much expectation for the most part
(partly due to Hodgson playing everything down).
Right up until the
moment England won 3-2 away in Germany and the weight of expectation returned.
But maybe, just maybe, extreme levels of
apathy might just be crazy enough to work.
