Watching England this summer has been markedly different from the experience, 3 years ago, in the World Cup. The World Cup of 2018 was a peak moment as a Londoner. Those rare times of perceptible unity. Packed into small sawdust-covered pubs, squinting at a TV across the room, pint resting heavily on dashed nerves. That warm summer the city came alive, revived like the 2012 Olympics. On the street, it was on everyone’s mind, and we had something to talk about. We had as a city and a country a shared dream: maybe football was coming home.
This time we have another shared hope. Not quite as long lived, but harder suffered. The pandemic is due to be pronounced over in this country in the coming weeks. Even during this tournament, the virus permeates our every conversation like a bad and undeniable smell. There is much less of the gatherings in pubs to share the unique experience of watching England play football. The mood on the streets is not that of joyous, daring electricity that rushed between us in 2018. We are rightly pre-occupied with the health & safety of one another.
Framing our lives in terms of these tournaments provides a clear lense for all that we miss. Going through things together is harder apart. I remember watching a World Cup England match in a pub on Moorgate. Spirits were so high that another Londoner bumped into me and then…..vehemently apologised. I realise now how bumping into strangers on crowded streets and stuffy tubes was a guilty pleasure I took for granted. How effectively this international trauma has normalised itself that being gathered together seems an audacious dream. Meanwhile losing our loved ones is a risk that even seeing them costs. The pandemic has redefined the scope of what we can lose, and we’ve lost so much.
But we might, maybe, possibly, win Euro 2020(2021). A second daring fantasy for a grey July.