The World Cup - Should Scotland And The Home Nations Support England?

The quadrennial football festival of the FIFA World Cup has commenced Brazil, a nation that has won the competition 5 times. England have kept up their good record of qualification whereas the other home nations failed to join the party yet again, a situation that especially hurts Scotland after a decent qualification record that saw them miss only one edition of the tournament between 1974 and 1978.

The thorny question of whether Scottish fans should back England always arises at the start of every tournament and has caused disquiet in some quarters. This is due to media coverage showing pictures of the occasional Scottish pub showing the natives cheering for opponents of the near neighbours.

It is probably taking things too far to say that the Scots should support England as it is difficult to muster the same level of passion for another country than your home nation, even if it is a close neighbour with whom an established 300 year political union. It is also logical to question why the some Scottish people take a negative view of the England team when the English Premier League enjoys a great deal of popularity north of the border.

One school of thought for the negativity is that it is a classic case of the inferiority complex of a smaller nation insecure about the comparative success of its bigger brother. This may be true in some of the more socialist minded areas of Scotland though a more likely root cause lies in the media coverage of football tournaments. One such example is the capacity of some older commentators to drag up England’s 1966 world cup triumph even when it has no relevance. From the late 1990’s until 2010, there was also much fanfare about England’s “golden generation” who were always built up by the media as potential winners of any tournament that they entered.

The England team did not win many friends with their 2006 World Cup campaign which began all about football but descended into an episode of Footballers Wives. This was also the year that England famously played Trinidad and Tobago in the group stage of the tournament, a situation that led to a song being produced in honour of Jason Scotland. This caused upset in some quarters and was interpreted as anti-English though the song was a tongue-in-cheek joke. It would have seemed more unforgivable not to write a song about a striker called Scotland who was lining up against our oldest rivals on the biggest stage of all.

Unfortunately, the song got caught up with a number of other incidents such as Sir Alex Ferguson threatening to sue the English Football Association if Wayne Rooney suffered an injury relapse from a metatarsal injury. There was also Andy Murray’s infamous “anyone but England” comment. Both of these were used as examples of anti-English sentiment though Ferguson’s stance is better understood as looking after the interest of one of the world’s biggest clubs and ensuring that their £30 million rated player would be in a fit condition to contest the next football season. The Murray comment was made when having banter with Tim Henman but the Scotsman arguably showed naivety in making a throwaway comment to a friend when the media were present.

The Olympic Games are a different set up to football as all of the UK were united in support for Team GB, though individual regions of the UK also took special pride in the athletes hailing from their area.  An example was the people of Yorkshire who could claim that their region finished 12^th in the overall medals table. Football’s governing body always treats each of the home nations as an individual entity due to the fact there are separate leagues and administrative set ups  in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. It is unlikely that we will see a situation where all the national teams will be merged and it would be an unpopular decision among fans.

The latest England team are now managed by Roy Hodgson, a man who was vilified on his appointment for the heinous crime of not being Harry Redknapp. Hodgson has overseen the transformation of the England team as some of the old marquee names retired, helping to usher in some exciting, but relatively inexperienced younger players. It is now up to the players to win the respect of fans everywhere but the other home nations should at least sportingly acknowledge any decent England results whilst giving stick to English friends in the event of a lost game.

It is also worth looking beyond the comments of some commentators such as Adrian Chiles silly comment that Costa Rica’s win against Uruguay was a good result for England, when the result signified that there was actually another threat in the group. The 2014 tournament has got off to a fantastic start with lots of goals, the least that we can all hope is that all teams have brought their ‘A’ game.

Of course, if Scotland do adopt the same approach to this tournament as 2006, surely troubled cup holders Spain would be the most logical team to pledge allegiance, they may not have Jason Scotland but they do have Jordi Alba.