English or British? Football highlights an enduring identity crisis

“ENGLAND is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality.” George Orwell’s perception is just as true today as it was when he wrote it in 1941; for though excitement drowned out more complex feelings during two blissful hours on July 11th when England might have beaten Croatia to go through to the final of the World Cup, one of the facets of Britain’s multi-faceted identity crisis is the ambivalence many English people feel about the flag under which their team plays.

Football is one of the few vehicles for the expression of Englishness. Unlike Britishness, which is grounded in a state, Englishness has no political institutions. So whereas Britishness is about ideas of citizenship, liberty and democracy, Englishness is rooted in the soil, and a history that stretches way back beyond the formation of the modern state—hence the three-lion arms of the medieval Plantagenet kings on the football team’s shirt.