Shortly before the 2026 World Cup I bought Jonathan Wilson's new book The Power and the Glory: A New History of the World Cup. I'd read his Inverting the Pyramid on the history of football tactics which is more interesting than it sounds. I'm actually interested in football tactics. But apart from that it covers lots of colourful personalities and social and political history. I also read Wilson's fascinating book on the Charlton brothers, Bobby and Jackie, and have several others of Wilson's sitting in piles of books to read. Like Inverting the Pyramid, The Power and Glory, taking the world cups one at a time starting with the first in 1930, paints the characters involved, the social and political context, the state of the hosts and other countries involved and more. For many of the early world cups the involvement of countries was very partial, if only in some cases because some nations decided sailing halfway across the world just to potentially get knocked out soon after and have to sail back was not worth it. Dictators, fascists, and autocrats feature frequently, in the governance of football and more widely. I knew FIFA and the world cups have long been marked by corruption (bidding, referees, and more), questionable politics, and finance, but not quite how extremely and fundamentally. Wilson charts the many dark sides of the World Cup. Most recently FIFA president Infantino openly offered national national football associations lots of money to vote for his own proposals for selling off the world cup tournament.
Reading Wilson's accounts of the world cups in my lifetime I realised how some passed me by and others I was much more involved in. Some I barely saw any matches. Others I couldn't stop watching - relieved with the 2026 world cup that some games would be in the middle of the night so preventing me from watching them all (although that didn't always work; at least twice I was awake in the early hours glued to the screen). Reading Wilson's book, I realised I'd had some pretty big life changes between some of the 4 yearly competitions. At the time of the 1986 world cup, which I'm not sure I caught much of, I'd just graduated from university. Uni had been a mixed experience for me and I wasn't sure where I was going next or whether my plans for my immediate future were all that good. Four years later, by the 1990 world cup, I had moved to Brighton, was finishing a PhD on contemporary socialist thinking (which, especially after 1989, was undergoing rapid change), had bought a house, acquired two children and had got a job as a lecturer in sociology at the University of Sussex. I sat in front of the TV for much of the 1990 world cup amidst loud cheering from surrounding houses and pubs when England scored in their games. The 1986-90 period was not the only one that saw big life changes for me in gaps between world cup tournaments.
1990 was probably the only time I really wanted England to win and that was more to do with the personalities in the team than any national allegiance. I got into football through being taken to see my home town lower division football club, Reading FC. Club allegiance has always meant more to me than the national team. In my early years of football watching I also had soft spots for teams like West Ham and Arsenal, mostly to do with some of the players, Bobby Moore, Billy Bonds, Trevor Brooking, Charlie George etc. I've never really agreed with those who say patriotism is different from nationalism, that you can have the former without the latter. Maybe some can avoid the jump, but for most it's a thin divide from one to the other. So supporting the national team doesn't feel good to me. I've never felt a strong empathy with English identity in terms of football support or more generally. I'm half English, my mum is half Scottish and half Irish. I don't have much connection with Ireland but have been a regular visitor to Scotland throughout my life to visit Scottish relatives, and I have a liking for the place. But that's not why I've never passionately supported England. I've lived most of my time in England, and Scotland hasn't been big enough in my life to outweigh that.
It's more that I don't feel much identity with England, the country's history and its social and political realities. When England play I often want the team they're playing against to win if they are from a poorer country; I'm a supporter of the economic underdog if not the sporting underdog. I wanted Cameroon to beat England in the 1990 quarter final and the Democratic Republic of Congo in 2026 and was disappointed when England overcame them. More widely, world cups have often been about the beautiful teams from the poorer countries for me - which for many of the earlier world cups of my life has meant Brazil. On the other side, some of the immorality of world cups has been hard to stomach, especially (but not only) the Qatar world cup, the money, inequality, power, and the huge carbon emissions from flying teams, media, and fans all around the world.
Nevertheless, the first world cup of my life was in 1966 when England won. Despite my lack of English nationalism, I have thought through my life it would have been good to have witnessed this iconic and historical moment. But my early years until 1970 were spent living in Kenya and Zambia. We had no TV. There was no chance. Yet after a lifetime thinking this, I recently found out I may have been making assumptions that no-one, until recently, had ever put right. My next post is on the 1966 world cup that happened just as I turned 2.
Next post: My World Cups: 1966 - out of Africa