One thing I’ve been wrestling with all week is lots of people very kindly inviting me to places – to their houses, to pubs, to parties – to watch the football. I never want to do this. I am puritanical about big games on TV. I am too anxious if I watch it at someone else’s house that I will end up at not exactly the angle I want vis a vis the TV, or there will be another person there who will not be entirely focused on the game and start talking to me at the wrong time, or – worst of all – someone else will get up to go to the toilet and block my view just as a goal goes in.
I am happy to watch at home with my son, my brother and Frank Skinner, who lives in my road. Some readers may know that when we were doing Fantasy Football League, our TV comedy show about football, we were actually flat-sharing IRL, but less people may know that I have lived in two houses in different places since then and Frank has bought houses in the same streets. It’s like a very expensive form of stalking.
It does however make for an easy and anxiety-free – as I know, from many years’ together, that he isn’t going to the toilet or speak to me at the wrong time – football-watching experience.
***
As England have progressed, increasingly more people have been saying to me in the street “Dave? Is it coming home?” It’s strange how that line from “Three Lions”, originally inspired by Euro 96 being hosted by England, is now reflexively understood as code for “We’re going to win.” It reached something of a zenith on Wednesday when Keir Starmer was in the Oval Office with Joe Biden, and a journalist asked him “Is it coming home?” Starmer said “It looks like it” but my concern was that Americans don’t know this code and Joe really doesn’t need more confusing. Particularly not now that an assassination attempt on Donald Trump has led to photos, instantly iconic, of Biden’s rival as a bloodied but unbowed hero – one with the US flag flying in the background has, I think, a touch of Iwo Jima to it – which seem to seal the Republican’s future victory.
As usual when England do well at these tournaments I get asked to do a lot of TV and radio. I seem to become, for example, the Today programme’s unofficial, if not football correspondent – I think they have one of those – but “how is the country feeling about this” bloke. I’ve been on twice this week following games, and have said yes again to being on this Monday. Which, again, could be a very different appearance depending on how things turn out on Sunday. Each time, I have forced the presenters to mention that I also have a memoir out, but, throwing PR caution to the joyful winds, may not bother with that if we’ve won.
***
Sunday 14 July a big day for sport. It begins at 2pm with the Wimbledon final. I like tennis but my main thought throughout is: I’m glad Carlos Alcaraz isn’t playing for Spain tonight.
***
Late Sunday night. And so the hurt goes on. Only sport, perhaps only England and football, can do this, puncture so absolutely and abruptly – so nationally – all the hope and joy and energy that seemed tangibly there only moments earlier. Spain were obviously the better side, a team that shows signs of being a truly great one. Meanwhile, over some years now, the sanctification of Gareth Southgate – and he is clearly a lovely man, who has improved the culture and psychology that used to surround the team – has ignored the fact that he lacks the ruthlessness, the tactical flexibility and above all the creative football imagination required to win a major tournament. As long as the fans can learn not to sing songs any more about German bombers, the FA should immediately phone Jurgen Klopp.
Still, as Frank said to me on the final whistle, 60 years of hurt scans better than 58. I shall be absolutely insisting on Today mentioning the memoir.
David Baddiel’s “My Family: The Memoir” is published by Fourth Estate
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