A Red Card for England?

International Affairs, Vol. 79, No. 2, March 2003, Cambridge

The excitement and anticipation that fills a European football stadium before a match is hard to beat: the chanting, the songs, the fans clad in their team’s colored scarf. But, I confess, I was almost as excited to read Kingston University professor Peter J. Beck’s article on football’s influence on British relations with Germany, published in a recent issue of International Affairs, a premier publication in global politics.

As a football connoisseur since my childhood in Romania and a frequent visitor to World Cup tournaments — my first experience at this unique global event was the legendary final between West Germany and England in 1966 — I had hoped to encounter a scholarly article on this fascinating topic, one woefully neglected by much of scholarship. Alas, I wish I had never read this piece. The quality of its argument and the shoddiness of its research are so glaring that they merely serve to reinforce the considerable prejudice of the "serious" academic disciplines that studying sport and its effects on society and culture remain illegitimate scholarly pursuits.

Beck claims that Britain’s (mainly England’s) allegedly anti-German views stem from the tabloids’ vile language and imagery conjured up every time England plays Germany in football. He cites the use of epithets such as Huns, krauts, and Gauleiters (head of a Nazi administrative district) to argue that the country is stuck in a "two world wars and one World Cup" mind-set. But Beck fails to establish the relationship between tabloid headlines and British foreign policy. And he undermines his own argument by offering counterexamples from the broadsheets such as the Times or the Guardian, which are not anti-German, since they enjoy a considerably larger presence among Britain’s political class and foreign policy establishment than do the Sun, the Mirror, or other tabloids. Even if one were to acknowledge the validity of Beck’s focus on tabloids, his case would remain embarrassingly flawed since he never even attempts to create a compelling link between these anti-German headlines and the formation of British public opinion toward Germany on any level, mass or elite.

Moreover, even a bit of research into the language of the tabloids would have revealed that these publications are equal-opportunity offenders. Going through my extensive press clippings of England’s games against its rivals over the last 10 years, I noticed that the tabloids regularly used offensive, even racist, imagery when England played France ("frog eaters," "World War II losers") and Spain (the defeat of the Armada in the 16th century was invoked frequently). Particularly noticeable was the constant reference to wars — English victories in them and their opponents’ defeat — which bespeaks the strongly militarist terminology in all football games (American, Canadian, Gaelic, and others): ground attack, defense, offense, and decoy, just to name a few. This language also attests to the heightened nationalism still prevalent in the allegedly post-nationalist Europe.

Indeed, had Beck taken the trouble to analyze the imagery that German tabloids employ when the beloved Nationalmannschaft goes to battle against its arch-enemies (like England), he would have noticed sentiments similar to the ones used by the English tabloids. Moreover, as any football fan knows, Italian and Spanish publications regularly use militaristic language when they describe German players and teams. None of this nationalistic fervor has anything to do with the particular style of play; it only confirms that the football stadium remains a place where otherwise repressed hostilities can be voiced openly and with little retribution. How else can one explain the fact that shouting Nazi slogans or making animal-like noises when the opposing team’s black player touches the ball are commonplace not only in German stadia but in those of the Netherlands, Italy, and Poland?

Beck also conveniently fails to mention that the English victory over West Germany in the 1966 World Cup remains highly contested by Germans. I have located several German studies in optics and physics that purport to show "scientifically" that the ball never crossed the German goal line by the required width when Geoff Hurst scored England’s third goal on the way to the country’s 4–2 victory. Had England not scored another goal, the final outcome would be viewed with even greater anger and frustration than it still is in Germany today.

As Beck rightly argues, it’s time that international relations and political science take sport seriously. Few other pastimes move billions of people to impassioned action or create lasting identities. To my dismay, Beck has not helped the cause. If anything, he has hurt it.