Anyone but England?
Football is tribal by its very nature, and Scottish society has
firsthand experience of what can happen when groups of
supporters are divided along religious and political lines. That’s
why at Politics for Scotland, we prefer to keep politics separate
from sport.
With that said, it’s easy to see how international football can
end up being about more than just the game. If two nations are
already divided along political lines, a match between them will
inevitably take on added meaning.
Yesterday, we published a post on X criticising The
National’s front-page splash which expressed support for Spain
in today's Euro 2024 final versus England.
To be clear, we don’t oppose the decision of Scottish people to
support Spain in this fixture. However, we do think that
language used in the text is damaging to the cause of
independence.
For example, claiming that English people: “sponge off your
public services” is strikingly similar to language used by far-
right activists to describe immigrants in the UK.
Regardless of whether this is mean to be ironic, it makes
independence supporters look petty and narrow minded. Plenty
of Scottish people choose to holiday and retire in Spain.
At the same time, we do believe that there’s a point to be made
about why Scottish people support anybody but England.
A simple explanation is that Scotland and England are historic
footballing rivals. In fact, it’s recognised by FIFA that the teams
played against each-other in the first ever international match.
Most football fans don’t support their rival team when they’re
not playing against them, but you often hear the argument that
Scotland fans should support England because they are our neighbours,
or because both countries are constituent nations of the UK.
If you believe this, nothing is stopping you from supporting
England. The problem comes when people can’t just accept
that not every Scottish person does.
SNP Westminster leader Stephen Flynn recently appeared on
Good Morning Britain, where he was pressed on his lack of
support for England.
The hosts grilled him with questions such as: “shouldn’t we
support each-other? Isn’t that the right way for us to work
together?”
“Is it under zero circumstances that you could bring yourself to
back England?”
This fairly common attitude suggests that it’s not enough for
Scotland supporters to be indifferent to England’s team, they
must actively support them.
You wouldn’t expect a Celtic fan to support Rangers when they
play a team that isn’t from Glasgow. At an international level, it
would be absurd to suggest that Portuguese people have a
duty to support Spain. The countries are neighbours and are
even part of the same political union (the EU), but nobody
expects them to cheer for each-other.
Isn’t it enough for England fans to support themselves? Why is
anybody bothered if Scotland fans back them or not?
It’s likely that many Scotland fans oppose the English team due
to political reasons, and they have every right to do so. We’d
encourage those people to consider that the Spanish state is
known for its harsh treatment of Catalan and Basque
independence supporters before decorating their houses with
Spanish flags.
For us, pure footballing rivalry coupled with the refusal of many
to accept that we don’t actively support England, is enough to
make us support whoever plays against them.
We are not offended when England fans chant “F*ck off Tartan
Army”, nor are we outraged when they chant “F*ck off Scotland,
we’re all voting yes”, or “Scotland get battered everywhere they
go.” We accept that this is just part of football, and don’t believe
that England fans owe us any support.
Hopefully England don’t win the Euros, but if they do, we won’t
blame them for rubbing it in. We only wish that the faux outrage
will be left aside.