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Conflict of interest: Supporting England and Man United

“Go on, Tony.” I couldn’t help it. He was supposed to be the enemy. The big rough opposition captain, trying to strangle England’s latest darling. But at that moment, for me, the match ceased to be between England and Ecuador. I’d spent the game diligently supporting my country, but suddenly things changed: this was United’s Antonio Valencia against Liverpool’s Raheem Sterling. This was a nasty Scouser trying to scythe down Our Tony. Gooner Jack then piles in, acting like a goon. Manchester United against the world. Go on, Tony.

The higher one’s team is in the football pyramid, the more likely one is to face this conflict of interests when watching international foot- ball. Not only might you spot a hero in the opposition ranks (as Wigan, Hull and Stoke fans did in the Honduras game), but you might be pitted against an enemy in your own. Even Liverpool fans, currently the impeccable patriots, given the tendency to see this England team as having been created in their team’s image, will face tribulations at the World Cup. No self-respecting Red will be able to resist taking some pleasure from the sight of Luis Suárez dancing around Everton’s Baines and Jagielka, Chelsea’s Cahill, and, possibly (if Glen Johnson gets injured or continues to play like a muppet), United’s Jones or Smalling, in São Paolo.

The partisan nature of club football renders this inevitable, to a degree. We spend all year in a frenzy in which it’s seemingly acceptable to hate some men because they play for a foot- ball team we don’t like. As a United fan, I cannot stand Steven Gerrard. He’s the captain of Liverpool, he understands that that job entails fighting with United players, he has an annoying demeanour and self-obsession, and, most grating of all, he has managed to cultivate a myth of himself as the modern embodiment of the nearly extinct quality of loyalty (despite having submitted a transfer request to join Chelsea).

In real life, these aren’t acceptable reasons to vehemently dislike someone that you’ve never met. But I do. The fact that this man captains England makes the most instinctive impulse for a football fan – supporting one’s country – more complex, more of an exercise in introspection, than it should be.

Gerrard, though, has at least managed to achieve the support of most fans of rival clubs when on international duty (including, of course, myself, once the proper matches begin). Rooney has had no such luck. For a brief period, the fans who scream “You fat bastard” at him from August to May will crush him with their ‘support’ in Brazil. And then, as he inevitably underperforms, it will dawn on those supporters that this is the Wayne Rooney they hate for most of the year. Back come the death threats.

Partisan club support exists everywhere, but there is also something particular about the English club game that gives greater impetus to the internal conflict that international football induces in fans. We often like to think that the Premier League is the best league in the world. It isn’t. What it can boast though is a more global array of talent than any other league. According to the latest figures (which constantly change, given player withdrawals), 124 players from English clubs have been named in World Cup squads, compared to 66 from Spain’s La Liga. A fan of an English club is more likely than a fan of a club in any other country to feel a tug on his heartstrings as a hero lines up for the opposition at the World Cup.

Clearly, there would be less of a problem here if club sides were forced to play more English players. This seems unlikely. The forthcoming Nations League may have a more subtle effect: if we see England play more regularly in actual competition, the feeling of supporting Gerrard, or Rooney, whoever the opposition, will become more natural.

For the time being, though, it’s simply something to which I (and many others) must quick- ly acclimatise, so that when Gary Cahill stops Chicharito from scoring a last minute winner in the quarter-final, I will collapse in genuine relief. Nevertheless, I can only hope that when England do win the tournament in Rio, it is Danny Welbeck, captain, who collects the trophy. The people’s choice. Well, my people’s choice.

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