So England kick off against Russia tomorrow and there has been an almighty hoo-ha about the conditions our top athletes have to play in, the artificial pitch being the main point of contestation.  Football as our national game – and possibly as some would say national religion, is a hotly contested point of discussion amongst the many social arenas of the nation. It imposes on such a large part of our culture that in some ways to be an English football supporter is a passage to fully fledged citizenship.

What of those in the nation that simply don’t like the game? They fall into a minority sector, rife with prejudicial sentiment and stereotyping occurring on the behalf of their football loving receptors. In some ways these individuals are extradited from the cultural consciousness of the country. This happens due to sports position as one of the single most unifying experiences of identity. In the idea of the nation, and many political theorists ranging from Hobspawm to Anderson contend, the nation must define itself in comparison with the other. This sense of the ‘other’ is a notion borrowed specifically from Edward Said who wrote of it in dividing the attitudes of the colonizing West to its exotic subjects falling outside of the West in terms of their global positioning.  

In many ways the game that will take place tomorrow is an epic battle that resounds so much further than from within the limiting confines of support. If England’s footballers bring us failure, the nation will fail with them. The interconnectedness we feel with these eleven ordinary people bears such an unbelievable weight upon their young shoulders. In many ways it is crucial that they only frame their mindset on winning a game of football, however as a nation we should also remember this fact and avoid using it as a referent in which to match the power of one nation against another, or even further the superiority of one type of people against another.