What is it the English feel they once had and lost? Or never had and long for? What is it about the culture that valorises noble sacrifice, near-misses, and heroic failure? Why, most hauntingly at this time, does the image of a red-shirted Bobby Moore, the blond-haired, gentleman-East-Ender who was never knighted and died of cancer aged 51, holding aloft the Jules Rimet trophy as a World Cup-winning captain in 1966, inspire such nostalgia and longing even among those of us who have no recollection of that Wembley final?
“National football events don’t become part of public history, they become part of collective memory,” wrote my colleague Nicholas Harris following England’s defeat to Spain on 14 July. “It’s testament to its power that I can convince myself of the vividness of Gazza’s tears and Maradona’s hand of God despite not being alive for either.” Nick was not alive for those moments and yet he has lived through them, or with them, as we all have. They shape the narrative of what it means to be an England fan, hoping for the best while being resigned to something less than the best. Fabio Capello, the unloved Italian football coach of the England team from 2008 to 2012, described the 1966 World Cup win as the “returning ghost” of the national game. It haunts us still.
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