Two Englishmen and a German talk about football… With SDF episode no. 48 being recorded sandwiched between the 1966 World Cup win (20,187 days ago, assuming Sam’s calculation is correct) and the 2021 final of the Euros (2.5 days ahead at the time of recording), we couldn’t possibly avoid the topic.
It was by no means the only topic though, and we started our latest Zoom outing by bashfully listing recent achievements, from Sam’s quadruple haul at the Communicate Magazine’s Internal Communication and Engagement Awards – read all about it here,
to my co-guest-editorship of ESSACHESS Journal of Communication on the future of all things PR and comms, together with the truly fabulous Ana Adi,
to without a doubt the most impressive achievement: Neville’s loss of over two stone in weight in eleven weeks (check out the Zoom video!), thanks to the NOOM programme, behaviour and mindset change, and a copious dose of strong will.
On health and behaviour change, Sam briefly mentioned the de Pfeffel government’s weight loss campaign post Alex’s brush with the cold hand of COVID: sunk without a trace, like so many test & trace and other emergency billions.
We did talk vaccination, from the US vaccination programme hitting a bit of a red wall (and no it’s not the same as in the UK, more like the opposite), where, via Tortoise Media, Sam tells us that anti-vaxxing Trumplanders are now blocking the way to nationwide herd immunity. Who would have thought…
For all the comparisons between Trumpland and Johnsonland, the UK continues to do comparatively well on vaccinations and vaccine confidence. Sam quotes a study from Real Chemistry – a former employer of all three of us, coincidentally – which shows the UK clearly ahead of the other G7 markets, with the highest support, and lowest hesitancy and opposition.
So it seems some things are going well, in spite of all the doom and gloom – and we’re also discussing media scare stories about NHS black alerts which may be more media construction, than reflection of reality (our opinions are certainly divided on that point).
In India, meanwhile, another maximo lider bungled his vaccine diplomacy badly: first Narendra Modi promised defeat the virus and then to vaccinate the developing world, then things went “horribly wrong” and vaccine diplomacy turned into vaccine nationalism. So now it is India First, just as it is America First, or Britain first, etc. Not even a zero-sum game, since everybody seems to be losing.
What is odd about this is how blatantly the numbers seem to be telling an unambiguous story: according to a recent IMF study, a global mass vaccination plan to end the pandemic in 2022 would cost $50bn, with an upside of $9trn by 2025. If this was about the numbers – ah but if the five years of doing this podcast have told us anything, then it is that it’s much less about the numbers, than we numbers focused nerds think.
So to Mr de Pfeffel’s mouthy G7 promises on a sun drenched Carbis Bay in June: the ever excellent Tortoise Media has a story on that too – and reader this may shock you but it would seem this was a promise not quite worth its weight in truth. It’s funny how much Harry Frankfurt’s On Bullshit reads like an unauthorised psychography of the British Prime Minister. Anette Dittert, London correspondent of BBC equivalent ARD, comes to a similar conclusion in her excellent long read analysis (in German), “Die Politik der Lüge” (the politics of lying).
On COVID, politics and society, Neville informs us how the theme of deadly viruses runs through many of his favourite dystopian novels. A lot of it is rather too close to reality. John Lanchester’s 2019 The Wall comes to mind. The current Home Office Secretary, arch Brexiteer and daughter of Ugandan-Indian parents who came to the UK in the 1960s, would fit nicely into Lanchester’s depressing narrative: migrant camps on defunct oil rigs are the one story line that’s missing from the book.
Back to football, or rather the politicised appropriation of symbols. The Observer’s Andrew Rawnsley made some sharp points on novice Three Lions shirt wearers: “Priti Patel neglected to have the package creasing ironed out before she stuck on the shirt, while Rishi Sunak forgot to snip off the sales tags.”
Even the German embassy jumped on the ingratiating bandwagon with its #EsKommtNachHause tweet / post.
I added my own, very personal perspective on lions and St Georges – not on the podcast, but on Twitter before the game – by pointing to the coat of arms of my hometown of Freiburg, and more so, the fact that I grew up in a part of town called St Georgen. Many places have a valid claim here, including Genoa and, most of all, Georgia (the one in the Caucasus, not the one in the Deep South).
As for the home-coming: in the end, it didn’t. It went to Rome.
The world goes back to normal. Trees and hedges in Leicester Square will be replanted. Broken windows replaced. Prime Minister de Pfeffel’s Twitter image is again showing his face instead of the back of a rather stretched football shirt. Sam’s quiet renditions of #EsKommtNachHause will be parked until the World Cup next year.
For now, at least, there won’t be an additional stanza for “One Britain, One Nation”, praising victory for the valiant lions. And its message of different races united, opened doors and widened shores seems to lack some penetration and resonance, given the racist abuse suffered by Rashford, Saka and Sancho after their penalty misses.
Football, immigration and national identity: such a fascinating, complex relationship.
From the AfD in Germany to the freedom fighters of Brexit, all want to bask in the reflective national glory of a winning national football team. Even though, without immigration, there wouldn’t even be a team there in either case. For now, fevered English nationalism will need to look for alternative outlets.
The FIFA World Cup in Qatar is only 497 days away though, and the final, 527 days. Perhaps, then, a combined 20,716 days of hurt can be laid to rest. Although, as our German football cartoonist friend Christoph Härringer reminds us, there are likely to be some more challenging non-football themes at play.
The next episode of the SmallDataForum, in early August, promises to be a largely football free affair.
Listen to Episode 48:
Watch the recording of Episode 48 on YouTube: