Denied the opportunity for triumphalism and exaltation

Whatever the outcome on July 9th, the World Cup competition (along with the Olympics being sporting contests of the globalised world) effectively came to an end last Saturday with the defeat of the England team.



History always repeats itself, once as tragedy, once as farce. The anxiety of penalty shoot-outs has, for the England team, become an insurmountable phobia. Freud’s “menacing hand” reaches out, the dreams of the eight-year-old child recur in the imagination, the infant’s irrational fear of being killed by round objects (balloons, clouds, footballs) with spooky timing collectively manifests itself at a moment of (pretend) national crisis.



The annual turnover of English football amounts to 2.5 per cent of total national income. Investment in football represents approximately 1.5 per cent of national wealth (I have extrapolated both these figures). Football in the United Kingdom represents capitalism in a particularly pure form (professional clubs sell football performances as a commodity to the consuming public).

The media also sets out to make a profit from mass enthusiasm for football. The ferocity with which the Sunday Mirror turned against the England team members it had sought to exploit only days previously illustrates the skill with which cynical journalists can sell profitable copy whatever the outcome of the actual sporting contest (like a butcher making delicious sausages from offal, floor sweepings and mouldy pork pies past their sell-by date). It also represents a channel for the widespread anger at England’s failure (including the missed commercial opportunities that would have accrued had the national team won the competition).



Wayne Rooney is an interesting personality because he illustrates Freud’s model of socialisation (with a football team acting as the organisational framework). From attack to defence, from a feeling of omnipotence to a feeling of despicable failure, his experiences last Saturday represented in the course of one match the workings of the id, the ego and the super-ego. Because he is so young (aged 20) you can see these developments untrammelled by the “baggage” associated with someone older.



Quote 1:
“When men are in the throes of destruction they reject everything that is not of their own kind” (W. B. Miller Lower class culture as a generating milieu of gang delinquency published in the Journal of Social Issues, New York 1958).

Quote 2:
“Public sporting events provide a welcome opportunity to distract the masses politically and transform their applause for sporting achievements into acclamation for the political system” (R. Altmann Der politische horizont des sports – read in translation).

Prediction:
Denied the opportunity for triumphalism and exaltation, the press is casting around for a subliminal scapegoat – a target at which they can channel popular rage (they need a big story that will provide narrative drive and sell newspapers over the coming weeks and months). It is probably no co-incidence that the hounding of John Prescott has resumed (nothing can save him). It is possible they will go on to drag down and destroy the Blair government.