FIFA World Cup 2010 and The 'Anyone But England' Campaign
The English football campaign hasn't been so hot in recent years. They haven't won a World Cup trophy since 1966, when they beat Germany on home soil. The England football team has brought out a new sort of pride amongst certain parts of the country though; the 'Anyone But England' pride. This campaign has been started as a backlash to the poor form that the English football team has been having. It goes deeper than sports as well, and may have links into politics and a separatist ideology.
The Anyone But England campaign was started as an anti-nationalistic movement to support anyone who plays against the England football team. It was apparently developed by Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish fans of football, but no one is sure of its exact origins. The Irish, Scottish and Northern Irish all have their own football teams and have been supporting them for years. The campaign comes down to the fact that fans of these three countries don't want to be included in the sense of 'English' national pride by supporting the England football team. This campaign was a tongue-in-cheek means of expression for those people who didn't want to be assumed supporters of the England team, and of late it has been added to with fans who are disappointed in the dismal performance of the England team at the World Cup in South Africa. A YouGov/Daily Mail survey showed that a resounding 24% of people surveyed said they supported the Anyone but England (ABE) campaign.
The ABE campaign has picked up speed of late, and as the England team keep up their horrible performance, it will just get more and more popular. The political aspect of the movement has separatist tendencies to it as well. A lot of people want Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland to be separate countries independent from England, and this campaign has given a voice to their feelings. The campaign has picked up so much speed that news items have said that police have visited a store in Aberdeen to have a t-shirt with the Anyone But England logo on it removed from the display because it might be deemed racist (BBC). A similar story emerged when all HMV stores in Scotland were ordered to remove the same t-shirt from their display windows because they again might be viewed as racist.
The police thought that the campaign might be viewed as racially prejudiced by the English people, and they felt it was an attack on them by others. An interesting question though is that are the English, the Scottish and the Irish a different race? Racism is when a race is marginalised, and this begs the question that do all three of these different named people consider themselves as a different race? This act of removing the shirts makes the assumption that Englishness is a racial identity, (Pickled Politics, 2009). Now this may or may not be true, but the only people who can really comment on whether it is or not are the people of the UK themselves.
The only reason this campaign has been allowed to pick up steam in the last few years is because of the performance of the England team. Some say the performance has been poor because the current coach Fabio Capello is not right for the team. Others say that the fact is that all of these amazing players play very well at a club level, but then they somehow don't connect with each other and don't gel well at all when they play at an international level.
Whatever the reasons are for this campaign, it looks like it will continue to build momentum until the England team starts winning some matches. If this campaign is to continue, then maybe the political aspirations of it need to be toned down, and the fun side of it needs to be highlighted. The football team needs to do something drastic to see less Anyone but England t-shirts in stores, and more Everyone for England t-shirts in their place.
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