With the World Cup nearly over for another four years, it’s time to reflect on what a strange, sleepless reverie it’s been, and turn our attention to the next competition. Beyond Djed Spence’s sliding tackles and Jude Bellingham’s imperiousness, my highlight was not an England game, but the evening I joined London’s Colombian diaspora in Elephant and Castle for last week’s match against Switzerland.
Little Bogotá was lit up by a sea of yellow shirts and flags, arrayed across the streets and pavements of “Latin Elephant”. It was, as it always is for Colombia games, a delightful scene: an unofficial, chaotic, self-organised fan zone. The cafes and bars were doing a roaring trade, and a guy with a cleaver standing atop a pickup truck was hacking the tops off coconuts and selling them to drink. Children ran around chasing each other, older couples danced together and hundreds of fans, passersby and neighbours milled happily around, sharing views of the tiny screens and lamentations about Colombia’s inability to score, making new friends and sort of half-watching the game.
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People crowded around a few TVs propped up in cafe windows, but mostly watched in the middle of the street, squinting at the stream on mobile phones. My favourite mini-watch-party involved a mobile balanced on top of a mop leant against an exterior wall, and about 15 people clustered around it. During the hydration breaks, someone would blow a vuvuzela, mute the commentary, put on some cumbia, and dancing would break out mid-game.
Football fandom is a collective experience, and the conviviality, sociability, good vibes and even the collective animosity and partisanship is the point – the sport itself is pretty secondary. (I defy anyone who watched all 120 minutes, plus penalties, of Switzerland 0-0 Colombia alone at home to tell me that they had a good time.)
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With this in mind, here’s a key policy priority for the incoming AndyBurnham administration: more outdoor screens, more free fan zones, more open watch parties for all. In recent years politicians of all parties have been culpable of rendering the word “community” effectively meaningless, through their repeated appeals to “restore” it – they rarely say how. Well, when have you ever had as many cheerful conversations with strangers, neighbours, even rivals, as when there is football, or it’s New Year’s Eve, or a snow day?
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Informal, unofficial events like the one I joined in Elephant are always likely to be the most enjoyable – no ticket, no entry price, self-organisation and self-policing; I didn’t see a hint of trouble all night – but we need and would benefit from official initiatives too, in our parks and town squares. Too many of our public spaces are managed like their guardians are scared of letting the public in them.
We have got a bit better at this in recent years – for the World Cup, Brighton beach hosted a 5,000 capacity fan zone, in front of a 50-sq-metre screen, while Millennium Square in Leeds hosted 6,000. But why stop at football? On a smaller scale, London’s Canary Wharf and Coal Drops Yard now show Wimbledon and films on big screens every summer: outside, with no ticket or fee required. What if all the country’s best watercooler moments could be shared in the same way? The Traitors final in Hyde Park, anyone? Strictly in Princes Street Gardens? MasterChef: The Professionals in Centenary Square? There is an obvious incentive for privately owned public spaces to draw a crowd, to spend money in the shops and bars nearby, to give their project “life”, and office workers on their lunch breaks something to do. With some startup funding for the infrastructure and stewarding, why shouldn’t local authorities be encouraged to do the same? They’d make it back in food and drink sales in a heartbeat.
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Of course, nobody wants to do our embattled pubs out of the desperately needed income they have been enjoying in the past few weeks. But there is a supply-demand imbalance here, which has led to the lamentable practice of publicans selling tickets and charging fans to get in. No, I will not be paying £12.50 and scanning a QR code just to cross the threshold and secure the opportunity to pay £7 for a pint, cheers. Ahead of the England-Argentina semi-final, it was reported that England was “running out of pub”, in the words of Evan Davis on BBC Radio 4’s PM. The thesis went: 30,000 pubs, with 100 people in each, is a capacity of 3 million. There are about 46 million adults in England.An insufficiency of pub.
So big outdoor watch parties aren’t just the fun option – they’re a boost to community spirit and a stimulus for local economies, too. So come on, Andy, walk into No 10 on Monday and kick off with a bit of football-inspired populism: tell us that by the next World Cup, or Strictly final, we’ll all be able to watch our favourite teams win, and indeed lose, together outdoors.For good growth and good vibes in every postcode.
