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Politics, egg and chips, and World Cups
02/07/2026
John Williams, University Fellow in Sociology, continues his coverage of the 2026 World Cup.
The last few weeks have seen a rather strange combination of a popular focus on some potentially radical political change at home, and the social impact of global sport, primarily of course the FIFA World Cup in North America and Mexico. This all took me back to Harold Wilson’s famous insistence that England only ever win World Cups under Labour governments. He may just be right; both happen so infrequently. On the Sunday morning immediately after that glorious 1966 final – just 16 countries had been involved, with African nations refusing to accept their one allocated place – hat-trick man Geoff Hurst calmly mowed his front lawn. The victorious Alan Ball and England squad member John Connolly, returned home north with their wives. They stopped off at the Knutsford service station on the M6 and breezed in to order bumper portions of egg and chips. Remarkably, nobody noticed or bothered them in these pre-celebrity sporting days: ‘I had my World Cup medal in my pocket’ twinkled Ball later.
Recent events off the field have also reminded me of the arrival, after 18 dismal years of Conservative rule, of the Blair-Brown Labour administration in Britain in the late-1990s. This ‘New Labour’ government insisted that politics needed to intervene to rebalance the British game. Blair gave the go-a-head for the setting up of a number of special ‘Task Forces’ to examine and make recommendations on different issues: around club ownership and finance, fan involvement, accessibility, and racism. Such matters are still in vogue today, so the impact of this agenda was limited.
As a researcher and lecturer on the sociology of football at Leicester in the late-1990s, I was asked by then Sports Minister, Tony Banks, to work on producing the Task Force report on racism. Could I help organise some public meetings in Leicester and elsewhere to explore relevant issues? Of course. I was happy to do so. And I was reassured that I would have support for writing up the final report from an ambitious young parliamentary researcher and football fan who was available for the role. The young man concerned was assigned to Leicester for one month to work directly with me on the report’s completion and publication. He turned out to be both an impressive talker and a good writer. He was also nice: you could tell he was going places (You can probably guess by now where this is heading.) My collaborator and Football Task Force report co-author in Leicester in 1997 was a certain Andy Burnham.
Each of these stories – about the post-1966 World Cup final egg and chips, and the Andy Burnham Task Force of the 1990s – are included in my latest work, Football in Wind and Rain. The book is made up of short stories on the origins and development of the British game. It is based around my teaching at Leicester, so check it out.
We are already deep into the 2026 World Cup knockout phase – and yet another story about 1966 occurs to me. I was just 12-years-old and, as a birthday present, my dad bought two tickets for the semi-final match at our local Goodison Park stadium. England were due to feature – up in Liverpool! The excitement was epic. But FIFA switched venues at the last minute to keep the England team at the larger Wembley site in the south – which meant our semi-final was now West Germany versus Russia (Andy Burnham would not have allowed it.) At least we, and a nearby group of friendly visiting Russian sailors, got to see the great Lev Yashin keep goal for the defeated Eastern Europeans. But it was of little solace; and some people in Liverpool still struggle to support England.
There has been no such 1966-style venue fixing for co-hosts Canada in these World Cup finals. After losing to Switzerland in the group phase the Canadians were made to travel over 2000 km to Los Angeles, for their first knock-out fixture, against South Africa – which they won. The USA side has also survived. Supporters from abroad will need to stack up thousands of air miles to follow their own country to the later stages of this World Cup. The draw can seriously impact your travel plans, your finances, and your chances, in a way that simply does not compute in league formats. Arsenal fans, for example, know well that this season’s Champions League knock-out draw offered a super-safe route to the final for the Gunners. The same applies to Argentina here. But not, sadly, to England.
In World Cup 2026 in the round of the last 32, we have had modest Paraguay challenging a very poor German team, nations drawn wonderfully together to contest what actually turned into a complete bore-fest in Boston (Though all Paraguay fans are probably still celebrating their shoot-out win.) Later, two potential contenders, the Netherlands and Morocco, outfits fancied to go far, battled it out brilliantly in Monterrey. For many of us observing from Europe, however, this five-star international contest was only a distant dream, one played out at length in the early hours of Tuesday morning (Morocco, again on penalties.) This is proving to be the World Cup one can never fully grasp; unless, of course, you do shifts, or suffer from insomnia.
With the ominous French casually dismissing Sweden, and Scotland (and their coach) already departed for home, England alone carry our fading international football hopes. Wimbledon, test cricket, and even rowing at Henley have all been placed on the summer back burner at home. While the 23 Grand Slam champion, Serena Williams, can still play forcefully on centre-court at merely 44 years of age, the last ‘Ladies’ champion we British can boast at SW19 in a modern sport we pretty much invented, is Virginia Wade, way back in 1977. Almost 50 years ago. A sociologist might point here to social niceties and persistent race, gender and class barriers, all in operation in a sport still managed in England mainly as a country club-based social diversion. I couldn’t possibly comment.
Many things have changed on these scores in football in England – our women are now international champions – but men’s World Cups are still a struggle. Ranked fourth in the world, Thomas Tuchel’s men struggled desperately to see off 41st-ranked DR Congo. It was Harry Kane (again) to a late rescue. But now that draw effect savagely kicks in, because England next have to play one of the hosts, Mexico, in the round of the last-16 at the Estadio Azteca; at altitude, in Mexico City. The Mexicans are almost unbeatable here, and it is the Maradona ‘Hand of God’ arena from 1986. The portents are not good and the home atmosphere will be insane. You will also need to stay awake until around 3am on Monday morning to see the whole thing through. A ‘work at home day’ to follow perhaps? Or maybe, like Geoff Hurst, mow the front lawn? Remember: we can still do this.