BEWARE of what you ask for: you might just get it. And when you do, it is invariably more than you bargained for. Hamlet’s father asked for posthumous justice and set in motion the forces that took eight lives for his one. We asked for more passion from the England football team and got it — perhaps eight times as much as we actually needed.
But passion does not operate in precise degrees and proportions. If you ask for a lack of moderation, you cannot complain afterwards that it was only a moderate amount of immoderate behaviour that you required. And the night of England’s match against Turkey was out of control: dark, hysterical, disturbing.
It was also powerful, thrilling, inspiring and splendid, because passion is not a simple matter. Passion inspires people to love, self-sacrifice, courage. It also inspires people to hatred and murder. And there was something murderous in the air in Sunderland on Wednesday night, for it was a night that lacked the normal restraints.
“These things happen in football,” Sven-Göran Eriksson, the England head coach, said, in a kindly sort of way, as if explaining to a child that even nice doggies can bite. He was talking about a spot of bother in the tunnel between Alpay, the Turkey player, and the England goalkeeping coach, “Sugar” Ray Clemence.
Eriksson is right. They do happen and it is also true that murder, hatred, violence and betrayal happen in marriage. Wednesday gave us violence and hatred before the game, confrontations and violence on the pitch, a symphony of racism in the stands, violence and confrontation as a post-match celebration and violence in the streets when the game was done. These things happen in football— but that does not make them all right.
It is only a tiny minority, of course, a tiny minority of nasty people who spoil things for the nice people. That is the age-old footballing whine. A couple of months ago, England played Slovakia in Bratislava and there was trouble. The FA, gamely venturing on to the most perilous ground imaginable, said that the violence was provoked by the racist chanting of Slovakia supporters, with the implication that the England fans, leaping to the defence of the black Englishmen in the side, were more to be pitied than blamed.
If you hate the Turks, stand up. A racist slogan by any manner of thinking — especially when varied with “I’d rather be a Paki than a Turk” — and it was sung out lustily by, I should estimate, 20,000 people in a 45,000-seat stadium, about half the England supporters present. Not exactly a tiny minority. It was passionate all right.
The French penal code is traditionally more lenient to crimes of passion than those committed in cold blood: it is better to shoot your wife when you catch her in flagrante with the milkman rather than to put rat poison in her café au lait six weeks later.
Passion does not excuse racist behaviour, it just makes it more dangerous. At times, Sunderland gave us football from the Nuremberg rallies on Wednesday. These things happen in football but inevitability does not make them acceptable.
Why hate the Turks more than, say, the Germans or the Italians in a European Championship? Because the Turks are the least European Europeans in Europe. They look more Asian than English and — horror of horrors — they are mostly Islamic. We are in the middle of an escalating global war that was started because of the West’s horror of Islam, so it is hardly surprising that a football match against an Islamic nation becomes an exercise in passionate xenophobia.
But it is not a simple business. The passionate atmosphere clearly inspired the players. It brought memorable performances from just about everybody, especially the boy wonder, Wayne Rooney. David Beckham spent the first quarter of an hour trying to get sent off, but at other times he was back to his frenzied, passionate best, intervening everywhere, including at left back. He was in confrontational mode throughout, though someone really should explain to him that a Clint Eastwood glare doesn’t really go with an Alice-band.
The atmosphere of passionate desire carried England through. On a night of spiralling tensions, the joyous release when the first goal came was a physical, visceral thing. But the tensions of the night continued. Supporters were all over the pitch after both goals and at the end, which might mean that England play their next Euro 2004 qualifier in camera. Supporters know this, but still they celebrated their team’s success in a manner that might jeopardise further success. Football behind closed doors is notoriously passionless and, in such circumstances, England will be unable to give of their best.
The players themselves were looking for trouble, particularly in the triumphalist conclusion. It was unwise of Beckham — the captain, remember — to celebrate his goal in his usual run-at-the-crowd fashion. Once again it brought them tumbling on to the pitch. At the end, Steven Gerrard walked through a knot of Turkish players jostling and roaring his triumph in their faces, more or less demanding to be chinned. Supporters ran on to the pitch and Alpay was in the thick of it and apparently kicked out at a couple of them. Then there was the trouble in the tunnel.
It was a fixture that had even more nasty things than it had good things, and that is a considerable number. “Because of the tiredness and stress there were a few rows in the tunnel, but it is all settled now,” Senol Gunes, the Turkey manager, said, wisely not whipping up the hatred. “It has become a bit hysterical, but it is over.”
Alas, it is not. It leaves one dreading the return fixture in Istanbul on October 11.
Actually, I am longing to visit a city I have never seen. I am also looking forward to the next round in the passion play, but I’d prefer both city and match without shirtless drunks singing anthems of hate. They will go asking for a fight and when the Turks fight they tend to reach for their knives, because they don’t relate to the English notion of sore heads and bruised balls as a Saturday night entertainment. These things happen in Turkey.
I cannot believe that an England v Turkey match can take place in Istanbul without murder. It would be madness if the FA put tickets on sale in this country. Quite apart from anything else, the Turks will want revenge for the trouble and racist rally of Wednesday night.
There were 106 arrests on Wednesday, all English. Some were Sunderland and Newcastle supporters hating each other, others were united bands hating the police, still more — many from Leeds and other parts of Yorkshire — were more conventionally involved in hating the Turks.
Football is full of good things, and full of horrible things. A bit like life, really — and passion is at the heart of most of the good and the bad. The best things in an ordinary person’s life come from the passionate drama of marriage and family life — and so do the worst. These things happen in life.
People hate each other in all sorts of circumstances. Everyone who knows oxygen knows passion and everyone who knows passion knows hate. But the thing I find deeply disturbing is the cherishing, the nourishing, the cultivating, the cosseting of hate. I hate it beyond all measure when that hate becomes a source of pride, a source of personal identity, a way of coming to terms with the world.
There were once two aristocratic sisters, Jessica and Unity Mitford, and they loved each other. Jessica became a utopian Thirties communist, Unity became a Nazi. Unity said at one stage that she was “proud to be a Jew-hater”. Jessica was deeply saddened by this, but did not respond in the same tone. Instead, she wondered — I quote from memory — how anybody could be proud of hating anybody.
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