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Why England's winter warriors might be wilting in the big heat Why England's winter warriors might be wilting in the big heat
(35 minutes later)
Summer is almost here. You can tell. Water has begun to fall from the sky. Plus, of course, we are now undeniably running out of football, and as ever the end of the season, that familiar early-May dying back where spring finally starts to bleed into summer, feels both urgent and also slightly giddy. It is in many ways the most beautiful part of the season, a lovely time to be in a football crowd as the game fades into a series of coloured shapes ranged across a hazy green rectangle, the grass – even on the modern-day Premier League rink – gives off a faint, sweet humid mist, and just being out in all this space and light after the pie-stinking, toe-freezing slog of winter feels like something to be enjoyed.Summer is almost here. You can tell. Water has begun to fall from the sky. Plus, of course, we are now undeniably running out of football, and as ever the end of the season, that familiar early-May dying back where spring finally starts to bleed into summer, feels both urgent and also slightly giddy. It is in many ways the most beautiful part of the season, a lovely time to be in a football crowd as the game fades into a series of coloured shapes ranged across a hazy green rectangle, the grass – even on the modern-day Premier League rink – gives off a faint, sweet humid mist, and just being out in all this space and light after the pie-stinking, toe-freezing slog of winter feels like something to be enjoyed.
For all that it is also a strange time in the football year, a moment where the accumulated tensions of the season – leagues to be lost, relegations undergone – can often seem to slacken and drift, like the bit towards the end of a book where you're still drawn in by the story but where you can also feel the wodge of pages getting thinner in your hand, the realisation that all of this will soon be over anyway, and a slight relax of air even as all that long-awaited resolution comes into sight.For all that it is also a strange time in the football year, a moment where the accumulated tensions of the season – leagues to be lost, relegations undergone – can often seem to slacken and drift, like the bit towards the end of a book where you're still drawn in by the story but where you can also feel the wodge of pages getting thinner in your hand, the realisation that all of this will soon be over anyway, and a slight relax of air even as all that long-awaited resolution comes into sight.
There are various contributing elements in this, not least the fact that the governing emotion that underwrites pretty much all aspects of English football is not excitement or joy or love or loyalty, but anger. Rage! It lurks behind everything, the driving force in football's shared, glorious – and very angry – sense of well-seasoned community. Just supporting a team is a kind of affliction in itself. Actually having to watch them play week after week is frankly more than most people can bear. Even happiness in football isn't really happiness, but is instead a kind of anger variation, a gloating, jabbering, transient kind of thing which exists only in direct proportion to somebody else's sorrow and despair, and in which football confirms most clearly the truism that when it comes to the things we really care about it is not enough just to succeed: others must also fail.There are various contributing elements in this, not least the fact that the governing emotion that underwrites pretty much all aspects of English football is not excitement or joy or love or loyalty, but anger. Rage! It lurks behind everything, the driving force in football's shared, glorious – and very angry – sense of well-seasoned community. Just supporting a team is a kind of affliction in itself. Actually having to watch them play week after week is frankly more than most people can bear. Even happiness in football isn't really happiness, but is instead a kind of anger variation, a gloating, jabbering, transient kind of thing which exists only in direct proportion to somebody else's sorrow and despair, and in which football confirms most clearly the truism that when it comes to the things we really care about it is not enough just to succeed: others must also fail.
Understandably perhaps it becomes quite hard to keep this up when beneath it all your spirit is singing with joy at the warm, indolent rush of spring into summer, and behind the standard expression of horror and glee you find yourself quietly consumed by the smell of pollen and warm flesh and that feeling of being plump and docile and replete, like a dog in the sun that can barely rouse itself to growl at the birds.Understandably perhaps it becomes quite hard to keep this up when beneath it all your spirit is singing with joy at the warm, indolent rush of spring into summer, and behind the standard expression of horror and glee you find yourself quietly consumed by the smell of pollen and warm flesh and that feeling of being plump and docile and replete, like a dog in the sun that can barely rouse itself to growl at the birds.
Beyond this there is also a basic misalignment here. English football has always been bonded to the passing of the seasons, ploughing straight through autumn, winter and spring without the anaesthetic of a winter break, and in a country where the seasonal extremes are genuinely pronounced. At the end of which it is hard to feel completely consumed by the sense of dramatic endings, in part because of that general woozy saturation of the senses, but also because football has always had this back to front. The natural cycle is for birth in spring, life in summer, then death in autumn and winter. But football goes the other way, the season yanked out into the world in autumn in order to flourish in winter and fade just as the rest of the world comes into bud. It is the backwards facing dramatic arc of winter sport, a reverse momentum that can somehow leave you right at the end feeling a little jet-lagged and out of sync.Beyond this there is also a basic misalignment here. English football has always been bonded to the passing of the seasons, ploughing straight through autumn, winter and spring without the anaesthetic of a winter break, and in a country where the seasonal extremes are genuinely pronounced. At the end of which it is hard to feel completely consumed by the sense of dramatic endings, in part because of that general woozy saturation of the senses, but also because football has always had this back to front. The natural cycle is for birth in spring, life in summer, then death in autumn and winter. But football goes the other way, the season yanked out into the world in autumn in order to flourish in winter and fade just as the rest of the world comes into bud. It is the backwards facing dramatic arc of winter sport, a reverse momentum that can somehow leave you right at the end feeling a little jet-lagged and out of sync.
This is probably another reason English football has always seemed most alive in winter. But then the English have always been a winter nation, a rain-swept aberration jutting out into the ocean and occupied by people whose own imperial civilisation was built around a basic shared desire not to sit about doing nothing getting chilly, just as the Vikings were essentially people from a cold, rainy country who felt the best thing to do was probably to get out and about and stay busy, and just as indigenous medieval English verse is essentially a tender, elegiac, slightly monotonous poetry about how nice it would be if someone could just build a big castle with a fire to keep out this terrible cold. Or perhaps even, now you mention it, a corrugated pie-stinking out-of-town football ground in which to shelter and shout and in which, huddling together in a crowd can often feel, on some distant level, as though rather than simply doing a lot barking and singing and yelling you're all secretly building a big raft, or chopping down a thicket, or preparing to go off and stalk an antelope. This is probably another reason English football has always seemed most alive in winter. But then the English have always been a winter nation, a rain-swept aberration jutting out into the ocean and occupied by people whose own imperial civilisation was built around a basic shared desire not to sit about doing nothing getting chilly, just as the Vikings were essentially people from a cold, rainy country who felt the best thing to do was probably to get out and about and stay busy, and just as indigenous medieval English verse is essentially a tender, elegiac, slightly monotonous poetry about how nice it would be if someone could just build a big castle with a fire to keep out this terrible cold. Or perhaps even, now you mention it, a corrugated pie-stinking out-of-town football ground in which to shelter and shout and in which, huddling together in a crowd can often feel, on some distant level, as though rather than simply doing a lot of barking and singing and yelling you're all secretly building a big raft, or chopping down a thicket, or preparing to go off and stalk an antelope.
Of course, English players have always been winter players. Other countries seem to be pretty good at producing modern-looking, fine-featured footballers – the current Spain squad resembles a class of handsome avant garde architecture students on a day trip – but the best English players still seem stirringly outdoorsy and elemental. Wayne Rooney looks like the kind of man who knows how to skin a hare. James Milner may not be the model of a modern-day creative right-winger, but he looks like he'd be really good at building a treehouse in a pine forest. Even the most delicately skilled Englishman of the last 20 years, Matt Le Tissier, waddled about the pitch like a poacher with a limp.Of course, English players have always been winter players. Other countries seem to be pretty good at producing modern-looking, fine-featured footballers – the current Spain squad resembles a class of handsome avant garde architecture students on a day trip – but the best English players still seem stirringly outdoorsy and elemental. Wayne Rooney looks like the kind of man who knows how to skin a hare. James Milner may not be the model of a modern-day creative right-winger, but he looks like he'd be really good at building a treehouse in a pine forest. Even the most delicately skilled Englishman of the last 20 years, Matt Le Tissier, waddled about the pitch like a poacher with a limp.
Playing fast, creating a moment of warming explosive order out of chaos is what the best English players have always seemed to do, winter animals still paying a winter sport in a winter way, where spring feels like a peculiar kind of ending and summer a zombified re-animation. Perhaps this is why for England tournament football has always had such an unnatural feel to it, the players roused from their coffins and forced to trudge dutifully around some parched summer field, skin sagging, eyes hollow, senses hay-fevered, a biennial imposition that will begin again in six weeks' time in tropical Manaus. Playing fast, creating a moment of warming explosive order out of chaos is what the best English players have always seemed to do, winter animals still playing a winter sport in a winter way, where spring feels like a peculiar kind of ending and summer a zombified re-animation. Perhaps this is why for England tournament football has always had such an unnatural feel to it, the players roused from their coffins and forced to trudge dutifully around some parched summer field, skin sagging, eyes hollow, senses hay-fevered, a biennial imposition that will begin again in six weeks' time in tropical Manaus.
For now, though, it is time to enjoy the strangest, loveliest part of the English season, that early summer haze through which all that bunched and gathered tension blurs to a green thought in a green shade, and the ending that seemed so fraught and distant in winter comes instead in a soft summer rush.For now, though, it is time to enjoy the strangest, loveliest part of the English season, that early summer haze through which all that bunched and gathered tension blurs to a green thought in a green shade, and the ending that seemed so fraught and distant in winter comes instead in a soft summer rush.