England fans must hate themselves. It’s hard to conclude otherwise when you see the venom directed at their own any time the national team fails to win. Expectation builds up to a frenzy before tournaments, and when failure inevitably occurs there’s a huge backlash: listen to the Radio 5 or TalkSport phone-ins and hear the strangely exultant hatred that gets directed at the hapless players. The fans revel in the pre-tournament hype and they revel in crushing failure; it’s strangely masochistic.
The vitriol heaped upon David Beckham during radio phone-ins would make you think he was the chief executive of HBOS or Bradford and Bingley, if you’d somehow never heard of him. Beckham, having won more England caps than any other outfield player apart from Bobby Moore, suffers from a cumulative effect. He’s been around for longer than any other England player and is therefore held responsible for more failures than any of his colleagues.
Yet he won’t retire from international football. Like the fans, he keeps coming back for more, in the hope that it’ll one day lead to glory: he is the embodiment of the England fans biennially renewed optimism. When they pour their hate out on him as it all ends in tears again, they’re tipping it all over themselves at the same time.