Eng-Lads

1

November 28, 2013 by John

I recently attended the England vs. Chile friendly at Wembley. While it ultimately ended in disappointment, (Alexis Sanchez outfoxing all England players by providing the Chilean team with something called ‘creativity’) I did manage to enjoy my night out by indulging in a favourite pastime of mine – people watching.

People watching is always great; standing in the high street watching some beleaguered men being dragged around, a sunny day in Cambridge spent watching drunk toffs fall into the water after their attempts at punting, watching the sheer panic of a mother of five in an airport counting heads and frantically checking her pockets for passports… it’s endless fun. My new favourite place to do this is at a football stadium, especially when I can watch the Eng-Lads when our national team are playing. You know the ones; idiot, drunk, overly patriotic England fans who keep digging away at our nation’s reputation by swimming in a sea of lager warbling racist slurs.

Here are some of my particular highlights from the evening:

• Three lads sit behind us and throughout the game one of them insists on trying to make up chants about anything that’s happening… I mean ANYTHING. Examples:

Shot goes wide and hits someone in the crowd and to the tune of ‘same old Arsenal, always cheating’ he pipes up – “How is your head, how is your head”

(Jermaine Defoe comes on as a substitute) – “You’ve got one touch, you’ve only got one touch”. That one simply didn’t make sense.

“1-0 down to a four star teeeeam”. I’m assuming he’s referring to FIFA 14’s star ratings or something, but again it makes no sense.

• People quite far in front of us turn around, urging the crowd to start singing. But they don’t sing England songs, they sing Birmingham City songs.

• The guys to the right of us don’t know many of the players. “Is that Phil Jones?” one asked his mate when Ross Barkley came on, even though Jones had been substituted off a few minutes before.

• The Chilean fans were great. Jumping, waving flags, singing, blowing horns and generally partying. It was odd to see football fans having so much fun when they weren’t just scoring a goal. That never happens in Sunderland.

• A man sits near us who is approximately 40 years old. He has an England flag painted on his face. We realise once he is leaving the stadium that he is has been on his own for the whole time. It begs the question, how old do you have to be before you think face painting a flag on your face is a bad idea? If he had a young family or it was the World Cup final I’d turn a blind eye, but a friendly against Chile… on your own?

• More questions from our friends to the right of us: “Is Sturridge playing?”, “Townsend is so fast (after a break away by Glenn Johnson)”, “Who’s Lana?” (Adam Lallana was being substituted off)… I could go on.

• ‘I’m England ‘til I die’ rang out in the crowds and you could see some people really meant it. One guy looked like he would rip his chair out and try to fit it in my mouth if he even thought I had some Chilean blood in me. That wasn’t because we were losing the football, it was a wartime mentality.

• Lastly my favourite. A man in the stand is a bit worse for wear. Wobbling and slurring, it appears he’s had one Shandy too many. After about 10 minutes of the game his chants get quieter and his stand turns to a sit, which turns to a slouch. He begins to snore and all his mates start laughing. My friend thinks it’d be funny to try and put a pen behind his ear… which he does. Hilarious. Next up is balancing a few of bits of paper on his person. Again, it’s a success and everyone loves it. The man acquires a new hat, some glasses, a drawing of a cock on his head and his hands are placed in funny positions around his groin. Just when I think we’ve had all the fun possible, his mate comes up with a master plan where everyone in the general area around him should suddenly start screaming as if we’d scored. “YYYEAAAAHH!” we all shout and the drunken man stirs. He looks around a bit then says “Rooooney, Rooooney” before falling back to sleep. Amazing stuff. It all ends badly when at half time he vomits on himself and is forced to leave by an angry looking man in an orange coat.

I’m not too sure what all that says about our football loving friends. One thing I think it does say is that not many of them seem to care about football at all. Don’t get me wrong, not all of the fans were loopy, but who cares about the sane people when you’re people watching?