Ludicrous ‘anyone but England’ mentality harms no one but Scotland

Nothing tells you England are in a major final quite like an icy blast of Caledonian ill will. When Gareth Southgate’s players reached their last, at Wembley in 2021, swarms of Scottish fans in Glasgow swapped their dark-blue tops for the Savoy azure of Italy’s. This time, it has fallen to The National, Scotland’s pro-independence newspaper, to pick up the baton. “Time for revenge!” screamed its front page on Saturday, declaring that it was backing Spain with a depiction of Rodri kicking an England fan’s beer belly.

The attached text, urging the Spanish to go for the jugular in Berlin as “revenge” against ghastly English tourists, was exquisitely devoid of self-awareness. “They fill up your beaches!” The No 1 holiday destination for Scots last year? The Canary Islands. “They drink all your beer!” Quite the claim, after the Tartan Army mainlined so much Pilsner in Munich last month that beer hall owners dubbed their visit “Scotoberfest”. “They eat fried breakfasts all day!” Surely the only possible response is to invoke Alan Partridge: “It’s cholesterol. Scottish people eat it.”

This “anyone but England” notion might seem extreme, but it has drawn some high-profile adherents. None more so than Andy Murray, who, when asked who he would be supporting during the 2006 World Cup in Germany, replied: “Whoever England are playing against.” He was only 19 at the time, and the remark drew such vitriol that he instantly regretted it. But The National’s version of sledgehammer wit indicates that the teenage Murray’s sentiment still has traction north of the border. There is a reason why Pat Nevin features in an advertising campaign this weekend masquerading as an honorary Spaniard, on the grounds that he loves patatas bravas and owns an Eldorado boxset.

Such badinage is part of any tournament tapestry. And yet the lighter teasing still mingles with some outright mean-mindedness. As an illustration, it is worth watching a video that has drawn fresh attention since Ollie Watkins’ 90th-minute goal against the Netherlands to send England to the final. In the footage, recorded in the build-up to this European Championship, the Aston Villa striker says, with club captain John McGinn sitting alongside him: “I want Ginny to win if we’re not playing against them.” “Do you?” replies the proud Scot, incredulously. “Yeah,” the striker says, keeping it collegiate. “If you’re playing, I don’t want you to lose.” “Oh,” McGinn shrugs. “I’d want you to get beat if you were playing for England.”

Watkins looks heartbroken, as if this way of thinking has never occurred to him. McGinn proceeds to justify it by pointing to the historic English sin that nobody in Scotland can forget, still less forgive. “Mate, you need to watch the telly. Channel three, mate. It’s all English pundits, all English commentators saying ‘us’. It’s like, ‘We’re paying our TV license here’. You know what I mean?” Absolutely, John. Apart from the fact that “channel three” had Ally McCoist as a co-commentator for England’s semi-final last week, and then crossed to the studio for the views of the Republic of Ireland’s Roy Keane, the logic is impeccable.

In his myopic take, McGinn expresses a form of nationalism that is at least a quarter of a century out of date. It is the same with that risible front page, which resorts to the crude stereotyping that might have been de rigueur in the mid-Nineties, but looks painfully tone-deaf now. The English jingoism was hideous ahead of the match with Germany at Euro ’96, as rival tabloids outdid each other with “Achtung Surrender” and “Page Frau” banners, with one narrowly abandoning a plan to send a Spitfire over the opposition’s training ground and drop copies on Jurgen Klinsmann’s head. By the same token, to see a Scottish newspaper choose a stock image of “tattooed fat bloke in a bucket hat” as its reason for hating England is to wonder whether the last 28 years ever happened.

The feeling is not mutual

If The National hoped to intensify the Anglophobia on this auspicious weekend, the move has backfired. “I really don’t like this at all,” wrote Joanna Cherry, recently-unseated MP for the Scottish National Party. “You have got this all wrong,” said Stuart McMillan, the SNP’s member for Inverclyde. The novelist Christopher Brookmyre, a long-time contributor to the newspaper, vowed never to work for it again. It is a sure sign that in football in 2024, xenophobic provocation – of the kind that Fleet Street, admittedly, once loved with “zey don’t like it up zem” – headlines, has had its day.

Those tempted to defend the “anyone but England” school of thought could point out that fandom can, by its very nature, be petty, irrational, often deeply childish. But perhaps its defining perversity is that the feeling is not mutual. There is seldom, if ever, an “anyone but Scotland” undercurrent detectable in an English sporting audience. Take Wimbledon, for example: a more quintessentially English ambience, where sport meets a summer garden party, you would struggle to find. And yet just one week ago, the place stood as one to salute a Scot.

Nobody in the crowd held it against the departing Murray that he had once impugned the Three Lions, or that he had once turned up at the All England Club wearing Saltire sweatbands. They simply rose to acclaim a great champion. Why, then, should there still be such spite in reverse? Sunday’s final is, surely, an occasion to recognise that times have changed – and that an “anyone but England” mentality hurts nobody but Scotland.

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