Why I still support England

There was not a Spaniard in sight, I was pretty sure of that. But I was surrounded by the enemy, nevertheless. Naturally, the enemy included my Italian wife, Carla. We were at the open-air restaurant for the Euro 2024 final in one of the two village campsites not far from the nudist beach. If England beat Spain, I would have a plausible excuse to break out the booze after being on the wagon for far too many months and get patriotically sloshed.

I knew that none of those gathered in front of the giant TV screen beneath the stars could be from Spain, because the Spanish do not come to Dante’s Beach near Ravenna. Nudism isn’t really their cup of tea.

Instead, we get loads of Germans and Dutch who drive thousands of miles to strut about naked in front of each other. Mercifully, their national teams had been knocked out early, so we did not have to run the risk of unclothed Germans singing “Deutschland über alles,” or their Dutch equivalent singing football hits from their national repertoire, such as “Hup Holland Hup.”

Tonight, the German and Dutch nudists were nowhere to be seen. To be honest, wandering about naked in public isn’t exactly my thing either, or Carla’s as far as I know, but her family have lived here for more than half a century which was well before the nudists took over the best part of the beach and refused to leave.

They may not have been Spaniards in front of the giant TV screen, but they were all “Me-di-terr-an-eo,” as they say in Italy, and so all wanted Spain to win. That’s just the way it is. We inglesi are not much loved in the Mediterranean. It has to do, I think, with the weird juxtaposition of two national stereotypes: the English gentleman, who is a complete cad, and the English hooligan, who is a complete animal.

I was with Carla, and four of our children Magdalena, 16, Rita, 15, Giovanni-Maria, 12, and Giuseppe, eight. With Italy knocked out, the children said that despite feeling first and foremost Italian they really, genuinely did now support England. Carla, being a thoroughbred mediterranea, was different. She pretends to support England out of pity for me (as long as they are not playing Italy), but it is obvious her heart is not in it.

To understand what she is like when she really does support a football team, it is enough to recall her behavior when Italy beat England on penalties during the last final in 2021 which we watched at home. So fired up was she that after England took an early lead, off she went to wash her hair and pray to an image of the Madonna, attached to the kitchen fridge. When Italy equalized, she briefly reappeared to look at the replay, and then in extra time made another apparition, but spent the penalties back in front of the fridge deep in prayer. Victory assured for the Azzurri, all hell broke loose. She and the children abandoned me slumped in front of the TV, engulfed by an all too familiar sense of ennui, to charge about the house and garden chanting and shouting as the dogs howled. Even the donkey joined in, braying like a trumpeter. When Spain took the lead in this final the restaurant erupted with joy. It was difficult to be an inglese in the midst of all that. It makes you think: what the hell am I doing in this country? At least, the two boys were sad. Was Carla? She could hardly contain her giggling. “I’m sorry,” she told me. “Really.”

Then, when England scored a spectacular equalizer, Giovanni-Maria, Giuseppe and I all high-fived each other. Forgetting myself, I leapt out of my chair and grabbed Carla by her shoulders and rocked her from side to side. Magdalena and Rita bounced to their feet and hugged me. Everywhere else in the restaurant, I suddenly became aware, there was glum silence. So I sat down. Carla, who had been to Mass just before kick-off, now made the sign of the cross at me. Spain soon scored the winner. I wonder why.

Carla’s like the Scots: anyone but England. You ask her why she can’t get excited about the England team and she will use words like “slow,” “paralyzed,” “insipid,” “spoilt,” “narcissistic.” Above all they are guilty of two of the seven deadly sins accidia (sloth) and superbia (arrogance). These are all very good points and difficult to deny. But she is, of course, really talking about me.

A new Netflix documentary — The Final: Attack on Wembley — about the appalling behavior of England fans without tickets at that 2021 final has proved extremely popular here. Magdalena showed it to Carla. “You are barbarians!” she said. “Barbarians!”

Actually, I’ve got a lot of Spanish, more precisely Basque, in me, according to a DNA test my brother did. We are both pretty swarthy ourselves and I often used to wonder what it was that once possessed me to learn flamenco dancing. One possible explanation is that we’re from Ireland on our father’s side and, as I explained to Magdalena and Rita, we are Black Irish: “You see girls, when noi inglesi defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588 many Spanish sailors ended up ship-wrecked in Ireland and married to local women.”

Noi inglesi, my foot! My roots are Spanish via the Emerald Isle and I’ve spent half my adult life in Italy. Yet I still support England. What’s wrong with me? I decided to have that drink regardless. I found a liter carton of red cooking wine in a cupboard and, as it was too late for the mosquitoes, I dealt with it outside under the stars. It made me feel a lot better but none the wiser.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.