I was surprised at how Jonathan Liew’s article in the Guardian Pundits’ showy partisanship reflects football’s embrace of fan-centric populism resonated with me and caused the notion of an “anti-identity” to bubble up in my mind, reinforced by the thought, kindly provided by Brexit Prime Minister Theresa May, of me as a “citizen of footballing nowhere.”

Throughout my football-formative years, as we moved house and as I later continued my own arc around the UK and abroad, I have supported home teams in Liverpool, Manchester, Ipswich, Bologna, Shrewsbury and Mainz. Through friendships and admiration of certain teams, I have also supported Sampdoria (Vialli, Platt), Bayer Leverkusen (Ballack, Babic, Berbatov), Tottenham (Hoddle, Waddle, Mabbutt) and Arsenal (Overmars, Petit, Henry…). Now, with a German wife and family, I can’t feel too bad if they play well and win (though it’s agonising watching England play badly and lose, especially to Germany). I’ve been astounded and confounded at matches, in pubs or at home, so - I think it’s important to emphasise this - I don’t consider myself to be emotionally stunted when it comes to football.

Yet I find myself asking now: what does it mean to support a team? Is an appreciation of who they are at the time and of their vicissitudes sufficient? Am I OK to reset so quickly after fleeting elation or disappointment, and appreciate their struggles after going down, or do I have to feel things more viscerally, for longer?

Liew’s article also highlighted my innate reluctance – quiet, usually unaware – to despise opponents (provided they’re not simply being despicable) in any field: sport, religion, politics, work. This can put me at odds with the heartfelt supporters, those who have maybe never known anything else, who are all-in, who would consider themselves the ‘true’ supporters. It makes me wonder: is my perspective shallower, somehow weaker, more diluted than theirs? And does it reflect the problem in the populist slide, that full-throated, roaring fanaticism trumps broad appreciation?

Football is often used as an analogy or metaphor for much else in life - team and tifo, as it were: If society can find the balance between passion and respect, my team, my tribe distinctly with all the others, not against, then I think we’d all be better off.

FaNatiCS could be an acronym for Fascist Nationalist Conservative Sovereigntists, that power-hungry breed of sociopaths and their cronies that have gained power in the US using newish but also very old methods, steeped in uncaring. Simon Tisdall in his article in the Guardian on the greedy power grab by Trumb and co links to an article on the Boston Rare Maps site about the Technocracy Inc movement formed in the 1930s and still apparently going today. That article links to a Substack post by Manolo Quezon summarising the “intellectual” links between then and now as Everything Old is New Again.

The trouble with these is always the same: the mismatch between the visions of power and might, and anything considering basic human lives. It’s easy enough for these miserable people to make us miserable too: our challenge is not to let them. Stay nice, stay considerate and friendly - and lend your voice to those who give voice to the calm majority, when you can.

From View from the EU: Britain ‘taken over by gamblers, liars, clowns and their cheerleaders’, a view from Helene von Bismarck:

“Populists depend on enemies, real or imagined, to legitimise their actions and deflect from their own shortcomings,” she said. If the EU has been the “enemy abroad” since 2016, it will steadily be replaced by “enemies within”: MPs, civil servants, judges, lawyers, experts, the BBC.

Oversimplification, lack of nuance are greedily seen as ways of cutting the Gordian knot of complex debate and “getting things done”. There are times and places for such methods, but not permanently in running a country. 

Also, from John Crace in the same paper (On Boris’s big day, Tories kid themselves this is the deal they always wanted)

“He had united his party – if only temporarily – over Europe. So it was job done for Boris, as Brexit had mainly only been about divisions within his own party. “