Three Lions on the Shirt
On a cold, dark day in December of 2005, we moved to the United States. I was 9. The day was cold and dark because of the weather and the time of year, not because of any sentiment about where we were moving to.
The first week of school in the States, I cried endlessly, both at home and at school. A friend would later tell me that during that week, I had been picked to work in a group of three with him and another kid. They both looked at me as I was sobbing because I was lamenting over the move and decided that they were just going to work in a group of two. I remember the first time we went back to England in June, 2006, and being overcome by jetlag on the floor of the TV room of our house in Sutton Coldfield. Waking up, I felt like I in a dream. How could England still be here, under my feet, after so long away? Will and I walked to the SPAR in Boldmere and bought as many snacks as we could. I made sure to really take in every English traffic light that I saw and the way they gave you an amber between the green and red. I wasn’t missing a moment. When we eventually went back to the States, early visits by family members where they would bring chocolate and tea and good tidings of joy and updates on rainy old England would remind me that things were good.
People are often known by a primary adjectives or nouns. Someone who can run really fast might be described to friends as “a runner,” or someone with extraordinary kindness might be seen as “really nice.” I was always “the British guy”- not English, but British. It was a label I adopted gratefully, as it was true and important and dignified, but one that signaled me as different in every room I entered. Whether it was as simple as being called a redcoat as a joke by friends, or having to go through the other line at the airport, or being asked if I could “just say something” to someone, or what I thought of Brexit, or the Royal family, or asking what I called the thing that your car goes into, you know, that houses your car- which, reminds me, don’t you drive on the other side of the road?, I don’t want to say it, YES! The garage! I love the way you say garage, I have always stood out in a room. Sometimes my Englishness has felt brilliant and people that shouldn’t remember me have, but sometimes, it can be lonely: no one really knows what I feel like here. My troubles are not your troubles, nor are my troubles particularly troublesome in the grand scheme of things, but these comments and words have followed me like the Pied Piper for 15 years, and they have shaped my identity and character.
I have always been football mad. Football allowed me to know England. One of my earliest memories is in my cousin’s bathroom, my dad and uncle with gel in their hands, giving me and my cousins a mohawk to emulate David Beckham at the 2002 World Cup. I picked up Stoke when I was 13, and I was known by my penchant for football shirts by 8th grade. I used to go on runs and pretend I was Super Jon Walters, or play outside with my brother until the mosquitos made it unbearable, imagining I was Steven Gerrard at the last minute of an FA Cup Final. On a trip to America, my cousins and I made a compilation of saves that 14 year old George had made, hoping that he would be the next David James or Joe Hart.
The natural bridge was to support England like mad in America. To watch every game. To buy every shirt. To know every fact. I remember watching the 2010 World Cup and seeing Rob Green throw the ball in the net against the Americans and thinking that this man had single handedly betrayed me and there were to be so many jokes, so many sneers. 2 weeks later, I was sitting on a black sofa, head in hands, as Germany scored a fourth against us. “He’s just sensitive about it. I was the same at his age. He takes it very personally,” my dad told my mum, as though I would naturally grow out of it (I’m still waiting). 2012 brings memories of watching penalties against the Italians with my Grandad, 2014 of embarrassment and shame, and 2016 sticks out as the year I called my dad to ask: “Will it ever get better? Will I ever see England be good?”
Fast forward two years. July 7th, 2018, the proclaimed best day of my life, where England beat the Swedes, and I was drunk with joy (and beer) by noon in an alley of Lake Bluff with family and friends all around. Everyday that summer, I drove to work listening to “Football’s Coming Home” and “World in Motion,” and by the end of the year my Spotify Wrapped reminded me by having Baddiel and Skinner’s song as my most listened to song of the year. Southgate reminded me what it meant to have fun watching football; he reminded me what it felt like to drink beer and celebrate goals and have a day as memorable as against Sweden, or Colombia, or Panama or Tunisia. Southgate taught me that, sometimes, just sometimes, it can all be incredible fun.
So here I am. It’s the day after the Euro’s final, and England lost. Something I never expected to happen (England in the final) happened, and something I expected to happen (England losing) happened, and I sit in tremendous gloom. The rain is dripping down the windows, and the trees don’t look particularly happy either in the contrast of the grayest, heaviest sky you have ever seen. Maybe the sky is an England fan.
Once the clouds go away, which they certainly will, I will look back on the last month as one of the most glorious of my short life. I will look back at the excitement against Croatia, or Will and I painting our faces against Scotland, Sterling’s brilliance against the Czechs, the joy, and then fear, and then joy again against Germany, the heat and tequila (probably a mistake) against the Ukrainians and holding the manager of the Red Lion in my arms after Kane’s penalty against the Danes.
And I will remember Italy. The small but beautiful expectations as Will, Dad and I drove to Toadstools early to get a good seat, blaring a collection of England’s finest songs on the way over. Luke Shaw scoring in the second minute, Dad in my arms, Will in my arms, hugging strangers, seeing Mum’s eyes well up, and we think its all over, and then Bonucci, and Donnaruma, and Rashford, and Sancho and Saka and, well, it is now. Then came the reactions, and the words of consolation, and the antagonizing texts, and the “see you in 2022” to my newfound bar friends, and it was all over.
So, what does it all mean? Why am I sitting here, writing this? Because those 26 lads, Southgate, everyone involved, told me, Richard Melville, in America, that it was not only okay to still be English after 15 years, but it could be glorious. They reminded me that I could say football instead of soccer, and I could say ‘ome instead of home, and I could say mum instead of mother, and while I was at it, that I could hold my head up high. They took 8 year old Richard, the night before he moved to America, crying in Sarah Anstey’s arms, and said: It’s going to work out; you are leaving, but you aren’t losing England. The three lions on the players chests roared off the shirts and turned into Aslan, crying out “tell me your sorrows of the life you never had and celebrate who you have it with.”
This last month reminded me often of Rubert Brooke’s famous poem The Soldier, and that even in America, I am still “a dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,” and a dust that is “forever England.” Gareth, Harry, Raheem, Kalvin, John, Steve, Luke, the whole team: thank you for reminding me of who I am, and thanks for the fun. One day, one lovely and tremendous day, football will come home.
