Sunder Katwala

How football united a nation

England did not expect. That was the key to this summer’s World Cup. Last night’s defeat by Croatia was a gut-wrenching disappointment. Yet four weeks ago, any England fan told that the World Cup run would end in extra-time in the semi-finals would have jumped at the prospect.

On and off the pitch, it has been a summer that has changed how we think about England. Is football just sport? Yes. But sport can do things that nothing else can. Nations are imagined communities of millions where we share something with people we do not know. There are few other things than sport that thirty million of us can share that captures such an idea so powerfully.

England embraced Gareth Southgate as a national leader because he told us things about ourselves that we needed to hear in 2018. Southgate’s great strength is that he understands identity. Having been appointed to manage England’s first team, Southgate spoke about why football is more than a game. He would, he acknowledged, be judged primarily on football results. But he was comfortable to volunteer that his team could do something more important than that: help to define the sense of identity that modern England has been missing. Gareth Southgate’s England this summer has shown us that we do have more in common than that which divides us. The England team have been a shared symbol for a national tribe of tens of millions of people. Those who cheered on the team were Tory and Labour, Leave and Remain; they came from across the country and were from all ethnicities, faiths, generations and social classes. As England progressed through the tournament, an anthem was found to draw people together: Three Lions returned to the top of the charts because it captures so brilliantly what it means to be an England supporter, and what it is that makes a nation.

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