LONDON — At 6:30 British Summer Time on a budding Sunday night outside the famous O2 arena, the droves on the concourse partook in an eccentric 21st-century ritual. They filed in to watch a sporting event that would not occur in the arena into which they filed. The actual event would happen in Berlin, but these 15,000 or so ventured out aware that a chance at sports historic bedlam winked at them from up ahead on the horizon.
They would seek mass togetherness to watch on the gargantuan screen as England played Spain in the European Championship final, and they would help show again how London stands near-peerless in its capacity to flaunt the tapestry of humanity. And as they would watch their cosmo England team play a final after it had trailed yet won in all three of its previous knockout-stage matches, they knew it had been a whale of a while since England had won either of the world’s two largest soccer competitions, the World Cup or the Euros.
It had been such a while that so few of them lived back in 1966 when England won the World Cup, and those few definitely did not include the lads pouring beer from an upper railing down about 20 feet into the mouth of a lad striving to collect it. To find anyone with any memory of England 4, West Germany 2, in that World Cup final, it became necessary to ask a question possibly insulting: Were you, by any chance, alive in 1966?
One guy said he was 2 but couldn’t remember anything and couldn’t remember anybody telling him anything. Two guys said no, they arrived in 1968 and 1970. Finally one said he had been 12, but he added: “I’m not typical — I must stress that.”
Rob Williams watched from a hotel in Bournemouth on the south coast. “It was complete madness, actually,” he said. Yet he had pulled for West Germany, even waved around a little West German flag, because he found the England fervor “a little bit jingoistic, is the word I’d use.”
“In recent years,” he said, “the England team has become quite a likable bunch, actually. Their manager (Gareth Southgate) is a lovely guy, actually, and the players, lovely, a diverse bunch and they represent what’s good about the country these days. I’m quite keen on the scene these days.”
He said of the state of the union of the 56 million English: “However many years of hurt, (England) almost take pride in it. Take pride in the number of years it’s been hurt. So there’ll be a bit of a readjustment if we actually do win this.”
“Don’t know what to do with myself” in such a circumstance, his daughter Ellie said.
“No, no,” Rob said. “It doesn’t come naturally to us. We like to be bitterly disappointed.”
Since that grainy day in July 1966, long enough ago that 10 of the 11 starters and 18 of the 22 players have passed on, there had been 28 editions of the World Cup and the Euros. England had qualified for 21. It had reached the knockout stage in 15. It had lost in three rounds of 16, seven quarterfinals, four semifinals and one final (Euro 2021). It had been lost seven times via the particular horror of penalties — twice at Wembley Stadium and then in Turin, Gelsenkirchen, Saint-Étienne, Lisbon and Kyiv. It had subjected its ardent and reluctant followers to an oozy 58-year recurring nightmare starring Diego Maradona and many others, and it had seen these gaudy titles of a sport it invented go six times to West Germany/Germany; four times each to France and Italy; three each to Spain, Brazil and Argentina (the latter two with the inconvenience of not playing the Euros); and once each to Portugal, Denmark, the Netherlands, Greece and Czechoslovakia.
That’s a lot of deflated hopes, well more than enough to simmer a richly refined pessimism with a paste of artful sneering. And then, at 8pm British Summer Time, down the Thames in the large and packed courtyard of the Between the Bridges venue and pub near the London Eye, they belted out “God Save The King.”
… long to reign over us …
They roared at kickoff, then settled into that stirring mass of silence that comes from studying the game.
Through the streets of central London, then, the sounds came in bursts, especially the de-escalation that comes from dashed chances. Pub windows showed necks all craned in the same direction, unless they showed nothing at all because management had covered them up with flags. Songs blared out from right up front and from down the street. Crowds gathered outside pub doors, meaning cars sometimes honked to squeeze by. Joggers looked weirdly out of place. If rickshaws had modernized with their music systems to go with their oft-pink fur, one guy had it down with his phone on the steering wheel hooked up to the sound system, playing the match.
An equalizing England goal in the 73rd minute wrought fine screaming.
Finally, of course, if you kept romping around, you might have encountered the overflowing Blue Posts pub on Rupert Street (est. 1739) as it became host to this faint wail. That little sound alone signalled Spain had scored and scored late (the 86th minute by sub Mikel Oyarzabal), that 1-1 and hopefully would become 2-1 and same-old.
The night fizzled. The bedlam stayed out in the future somewhere. The throngs dissipated with something that looked like dissipation know-how. The cops surrounding Trafalgar Square looked swell but had little to police, with the ones around the great fountain aware that the score had gone inverted, they probably would have had to monitor those who might treat it like a swimming pool.
Not far away on a sidewalk, two young adults with faces unvisited by the aging, two members of the rolling generations since process might have spoken for the 56 million. Said Austen Hayden: “I think I’m slowly but surely understanding everyone who is older than me having no optimism at all. I go into every tournament with a lot of optimism and just get shut down every time, so…” Said Clare Wandless: “I think England winning is becoming — well, has maybe become much of a concept now. I don’t know whether we’ll experience England winning. I’d love for them to, but it’s just, ‘Oh, someone said that that’s how they felt when they won.’”
“We will,” Hayden said. “We will. We will.”
“We will,” Wandless said, “but we haven’t experienced it yet, and it’s getting further and further away.”
Later, the old rehash went on the radio of a taxi stopped at a light on Holland Park Road. Just then, a woman in a nearby car said through her open window across the lane to the taxi driver, “How’d you think they were managed?”
“Not too well,” the driver replied. “Should have made a few changes a bit sooner.”
He paused, then said, “Typical England, though.”
