God is one, but He is three: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. And “by an equally incomprehensible mystery,” wrote Eduardo Galeano in Football, shadow and light (1995), in soccer, Great Britain is one, but it is four: England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales”.
In fact, the Welsh, who form an unknown nation of three million inhabitants on the flank of the United Kingdom, were represented by their national team at the Qatari World Cup last fall. Better, Wales, unlike Senegal, Ghana, Cameroon, Tunisia, Morocco, Croatia and Serbia, not to mention Qatar itself (sovereign since 1971 only), does not did not have to conquer its national independence to have the right to align its selection in the air-conditioned furnace of Doha.
To answer Galeano’s almost mystical interrogation on the existence of a Holy Quartet, we must begin by noting that in the kingdom of Charles III, everything is ancient, not to say that everything is crumbling under the weight of tradition. , and the wonderful world of sport is no exception.
Recently, having woken up in a hotel in the seaside resort of Aberystwyth, with the Irish Sea on the doorstep, I had lunch reading the sports section of Daily Telegraph whose first four pages were about cricket, an esoteric game in my eyes, even with three coffees in my body, while the BBC showered me with classical music and I spread my toast with marmalade to the sound of Pomp and Circumstance, the unofficial anthem of British royalty. Change of scenery guaranteed.
The beautiful sun, the blue sky, the dazzling light pouring over Cardigan Bay, everything conspired against the TV that day, a very big Saturday of sports, I had learned, handling the zappette sparingly. First the 142nd final of the FA CUP, the FA Cup, crowning, at Wembley Stadium, the oldest soccer competition in the world and opposing for the first time, in a tense climate, the two Manchester clubs: City v. United.
The Scottish Cup which completed the double program is hardly less old, with its one hundred and thirty-eight editions. As for the Derby of Epsom, the horse race which inaugurated the afternoon of the managers of sofa and the local punters, it is disputed since… 1780. The officials there all wear the top hat and they have the air of a flock of crows.
In America, the oldest sports championships — the World Series of Baseball and the Gray Cup — date back to the turn of the twentieth century. Around the same time, in France, FIFA was created: the International Federation of Association Football. And as, between English and French, we are not used to swimming in universal harmony, the necessary fusion between the English Federation (FA) founded in 1863 and the new Parisian creation gave rise to a confrontation. Sorry for deja vu, but the English won.
Thus the perfidious Albion, coming to the end of the centralizing spirit of the fatherland of the Jacobins, imposed on international soccer the four national federations of which the FA was composed.
Note that Galeano is not too much to complain about. With a population equivalent to that of Wales, his country, Uruguay, remains the smallest nation to have won the World Cup, and twice rather than once. In 1958, the Red Dragons (the Welsh emblem) beat the powerful Hungary in the round of 16 before losing to Brazil, the future world champion. Their best result of the Qatari tournament was more modest: a draw against the United States. Another moment of glory: semi-finalists at Euro 2016.
But results on the pitch — an overall record of 14 wins, 68 defeats and 21 draws against England — are one thing, and national pride is another. Paradoxically, a team born out of a historical situation in which the left-wing writer Galeano saw essentially an imperialist balance of power became the main banner of Welsh identity abroad. For fifteen or twenty years, a Welshwoman explains to me, the national soccer team has played an increased role in representing the small nation that bears the Gaelic name of Cymru.
By the way, what did I know about Cymru before going there? Apart from the fact that the Welsh are sending a soccer team to the World Cup – but not to the Olympics – absolutely nothing. Having eyes and ears only for Scotland’s unfortunate quest for independence, I was unaware that a bilingual display was flourishing 200 kilometers from London, that Welsh was a living language and that there was, outside of that of Shakespeare, a Welsh literature. Even more damning proof of my ignorance: the only Welsh writer I could name was Dylan Thomas, who died in 1953.
Then I met one, a poet too and very much alive. One of the first things he said to me was: language is political. We were made to understand each other.
As I passed through London, near Hyde Park, I thought of the reasons I have for loving (or admiring) the English: 1. their friendliness towards passers-by, this perfect civility; 2.Churchill; 3. the best secret services — that was before the Israeli student surpassed the master. And in a low voice, I hummed the chant composed by Real Madrid supporters and taken up by Welsh supporters, in tribute to Gareth Bale, Cymru’s best player who in 2012 alleged back pain for refusing to play with the British selection at the London Olympics: “ Long live Gareth Bale! He said he had a bad back, fuck the Union Jack! »
Novelist, freelance writer and atypical sports columnist, Louis Hamelin is the author of a dozen books.