In football men are too often forgiven for the wrong things and penalised for getting it right. Bukayo Saka, who received masses of racist abuse after missing his penalty in the final against Italy in 2021, scored a brilliant late equaliser on Saturday in England’s quarter-final against Switzerland. He scored in the penalty shootout too, prompting Rio Ferdinand to tweet: ‘Where are the albania phone data racists now???? Probably still celebrating!!!!’ The day before, France had beaten Portugal on penalties after a 0-0 draw. Criticised for his team’s conservative performance, the French manager Didier Deschamps said: ‘If we’re boring you, you can watch something else, it doesn’t matter.’ I wish Gareth Southgate said things like this (but he’s never won anything).
Chumbawamba performed ‘Tubthumping’ at the 1998 Brit Awards, adding the line: ‘New Labour sold out the dockers, just like they’ll sell out the rest of us.’
‘This is for the Liverpool dockers!’ Keir Starmer has been criticised for selling out Liverpool, too, and my hopes aren’t high for the rest of us, but I’m still happy to see the back of the Tories. A friend observed that if England go all the way – a big if – we’ll never have to worry about a Conservative government again; for superstitious reasons no football fan will ever vote for them. But first we have to beat the Netherlands in the semi-final, where with luck ‘we’ll be singing when we’re winning.’