Do we have to go through this again? It would appear we do. So for, one hopes, the last time: it is not racist to think the manager of England’s football team should be English.
It is not overtly racist, it is not borderline racist, it is not in the ball park of racism, and anyone who thinks that it is does not understand either racism, or international sport.
Wanting England’s manager to be English is nationalism. And you may think nationalism is not greatly to be admired either.
It is not racist to want the England football boss to be English – it’s nationalist, and that’s fine
There is speculation over the future of England’s Gareth Southgate after their World Cup exit
Misguided nationalism persuaded this country into the greatest act of economic and political self-harm until some bright sparks among the Conservative membership came up with the idea of anointing Liz Truss.
Nationalism is a notch up from patriotism which is, as Samuel Johnson had it, ‘the last refuge to which a scoundrel clings’. He was talking about William Pitt, the Elder, in 1775. He should try dealing with this lot.
Anyway, we’ve digressed. Nationalism is, in part, responsible for some of humanity’s most noble enterprises — fighting Nazis — and also some of its basest: becoming Nazis. Yet here’s the thing: nationalism is absolutely essential to the point and purpose of international sport.
Take nationalism away and there is no sense in a World Cup, or any international competition, really. Why bother to even keep score if it doesn’t matter whether your footballers are superior to those of the country next door?
The first international fixture, Scotland versus England in 1872, was a nationalist exercise and so was every international match that has been played since.
It is, in its way, an attempt to prove your nation’s supremacy. That’s why it gets confused with racism. Yet racism centres on discrimination, marginalisation, exclusion and prejudice, with racial characteristics and ethnicity the motivation.
Nobody is arguing the England manager cannot be black. Nobody is bringing race into it at all. The English are not a race anyway, no more than the French are. Nations are invariably part of wider ethnic groups.
Sven-Goran Eriksson was a successful club manager recruited from abroad to bring success
But the England tenure of the Swede, and that of Italian Fabio Capello (above), ended in failure
Here in Qatar, for instance, the locals felt…