English Soccer Isn’t Comfortable With Its Sexuality

In England, soccer and masculinity collide, and neither one can escape from the past.

This piece is part of a special series on the End of Gender. This series includes bloggers from Role/Reboot, Good Men Project, The Huffington Post, Salon, HyperVocal, Ms. Magazine, YourTango, Psychology Today, Princess Free Zone, The Next Great Generation, and Man-Making.

One American view of Europe is that it’s a liberal place where men look like women, women have hair in their armpits, and everyone takes naps. That is, it’s a place that anyone who’s ever called himself an “NFL Analyst” is scared shitless we’re going to become. Again, as always, “NFL Analyst” and “right-wing [anything]” are interchangeable here.

England is in Europe—geography lesson!—but England is European in the same way that Pizza Hut is pizza. Well, while it may very well be stereotypically European (read: progressive) in certain areas—although some things might make you question this—it’s regressively American when it comes to soccer.

The last time I said something like that, in a bar right after the U.S. tied England at the 2010 World Cup, two English guys tried to choke me out. Luckily I was spared, one would assume, so I could do something other than write this story.

England is the best because it’s English. It’s a mindset that stretches back to when, well, almost everything in the world was English. And it’s a lesson that David De Gea, Manchester United’s new 20-year-old Spanish goalkeeper, has had to learn way too quickly.

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A few facts: Spain is the best soccer-playing nation in the world. The three best Spanish goalies might be—probably not, but you could at least make a case—the three best goalies in the world. David De Gea is the fourth-best Spanish goalie. He started for the European-champion Spanish under-21 team. He started for Atletico Madrid, a, comparatively, very good professional team in Spain. Alex Ferguson bought him for 18.9-million pounds. Alex Ferguson has never done anything wrong. And David De Gea is, again, 20 years old.

He’s also the starting goalie for Manchester United, the best club in England, undefeated in seven games so far. Before he stole doughnuts, the English press was praising him for his performance in a 1-1 tie to Stoke City, while also recognizing that, despite playing for the best team in the league, he’d faced more shots than any other keeper. But it didn’t start off like that.

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In England, the English Premier League is the best league in the world because the manliest men play it at the fastest pace with the most-physical physicality. And the fans get drunk and beat each other up because it’s football! If you dive—or even if you get hurt by a tackle—you’re less of a man. And generally, if you do these things, you’re a foreigner. The EPL is no place for a 20-year-old Spanish kid, or so it goes.

Now, all of this is completely backward and false. Much of the English view of the sport is. Nothing about the Premier League’s Englishness has anything to do with the quality of the league—other than it being English people who fill the seats. The best players aren’t English. The best teams aren’t owned by Englishmen. The best teams in the world aren’t English. And all these things that foreigners “do”—dive, fake injuries, be skinny, rely on things other than “pace,” “industry,” and “steel”—Englishmen do, too. Hello, Mr. Barton.

England has won the World Cup once. That was in 1966, when they hosted it. They haven’t won a major tournament since, yet the English Premier League has no problem telling you that it’s the best league in the world. It’s the best league in the world even though the two best teams in the world play somewhere else.

There’s a partial-myth that England invented the sport, that they are the rightful owners. All that was confirmed in 1966, and it’s all that’s confirmed it since. Fast-forward a few decades and English teams dominated the Champions League for a few years in the late 2000’s. More proof, some said. (Well, other than these teams being comprised of, owned by, and coached by mostly non-English people, but we’ll just forget about that.)

Back in 1966, the sport was different. And it was different being a man. You drank a pint, you kicked some people, occasionally kicked a ball, kicked some more people, drank some more pints, and then came home to your wife. England had some guys who could play a bit, but, mostly, they were big, fit, physical, and pacey: all words that are still used to describe the Premier League today.

Or if you didn’t play, you went to your job at the mill, drank a few pints, went to the game, drank a few more pints, and then came home to your wife. You were a man, so that’s just what you did and how you did it. You played the sport in a manly way, or you did your job in a manly way. There was only one definition for “manly” back then, and most every man had to fit himself into it. If you didn’t, you were weeded out, or you led two lives, not letting anyone see how “different” you really were.

Englishness and manliness defined each other. But that was 45 years ago. Soccer isn’t played the same way. (Spain and Barcelona are basically the exact opposite of the 1966 English squad.) And “manly” doesn’t mean what it used to mean, either.

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In his first few games, despite winning them all, De Gea made a few mistakes, as any keeper who isn’t an octopus tends to. He also made some stunning saves, but that didn’t matter. He wasn’t a 20-year-old (goalies are usually considered “in their prime” in their early 30s) starting—and winning—games.

He was a foreigner, a skinny, well-coiffed foreigner with a weird name and weird socks. He didn’t look like an English goalie, and he certainly didn’t look like an English man. More of a finesse keeper—a great shot-stopper with un-goalie-like foot skills, rarely coming off of his line to pummel opposing strikers—De Gea fit perfectly into the too-convenient excuses of not being able to handle “the pressure of a big English club” and “the pace and power of the Premier League.”

Pull anything from the papers of a few weeks ago, and you’ll see it. Even Steve McManaman, one of the few Englishmen who actually tried to play outside of England and one who you’d think might not lean on the “If it’s not English, that’s why it sucks” crutch, said he thought Manchester United was in near-crisis mode because of their goalkeeper … after three games. And then, finally, Fox Soccer Channel’s Warren Barton, the human potato chip, said what everyone was thinking. At halftime of a Manchester game, he told De Gea that he needed to step up and “be a man.”

The press have since shut up, not because De Gea has started to play or look more like a man, but because he’s continued to play like who he is: a super-talented, not-at-all-English goalie. But don’t worry. Whenever De Gea screws up next, they’ll all be back to tell us how the English way is the best and only way. If not, they’ll just find someone else and tell him he isn’t a man.

—Photo via www.talksport.co.uk/