Paul Breen: When did football become a political line in the sand?

This time round the competitors include traditional powerhouses such as England, France, Italy and Germany (the hosts) alongside lesser lights like Georgia, Albania, Slovenia and Slovakia.

Scotland are there too but neither of Ireland’s two national sides appear. They’re both mere shadows of what they were a few decades ago, such as in those momentous summers of ‘España 82’ and ‘UEFA Euro 1988’, which was also coincidentally held in (West) Germany.

Two images from those times stand out. Ray Houghton’s winning goal against England on the glorious afternoon of June 21 in Stuttgart. Glorious in the sense of the weather of course because I remember sacrificing a family trip to Bundoran to stay home and watch the game.

Meanwhile, a few years and countries south of that, Northern Ireland had their most glorious moment in the sunshine as well.

On an unforgettable night in June 1982, they beat their Spanish hosts 1-0 in the Casanova stadium in Valencia. Gerry Armstrong scored the winner, transcending sectarian politics and a divided society with a single shot.

A lot has changed for both teams since then and not just on the field. And if my memory serves me right, the whole island of Ireland seemed to be cheering on Northern Ireland in their efforts.

We were all united, “cheering one and all” under the common anthem of ‘Yer Man’, performed by Dana Rosemary Scallion. And to the best of my knowledge, nobody was counting Catholics and Protestant players the way the English tabloids counted their black players of the time.

Yet the strange thing is that on the surface, Northern Ireland was far more politically divided then than it is now. But the Spanish sun and the exoticism of games against the likes of Honduras and Yugoslavia put politics to bed for 90 minutes and brought us all together.

In the same way, when the Republic of Ireland first rose to football prominence in the eighties, everyone seemed to support them too. I remember reading about Belfast loyalists who said that it was the first time they’d seen a tricolour outside the context of Northern Republicanism.

And in terms of Republicanism, it’s impossible to forget that the 1982 World Cup in Spain took place less than a year after the death of the last of 10 Hunger Strikers in the summer of 1981.

It was a tense time in which Belfast was both literally and figuratively burning. Yet both sides of the community managed to put a distance between football and politics to support the players.

Some of the players on that team included Martin O’Neill, Norman Whiteside, Pat Jennings, Sammy McIlroy and Enniskillen’s own Jimmy Cleary. He is sometimes described in Fermanagh GAA circles as ‘the one that got away’ because unfortunately, he couldn’t play both sports. Maybe if only the dates hadn’t clashed in that summer of 1982, Jimmy Cleary would have teamed up with the great Peter McGinnity and Brookeborough’s Arthur Mulligan to secure the county a first Ulster Senior Championship when they played Armagh.

All that stopped the Boys in Green (and Red) from beating the Orange Men that afternoon in Clones was a small matter of three points in a 0-10 to 1-04 defeat. Jimmy Cleary’s left boot could have made all the difference.

And to me as a child in 1982 supporting the Northern Ireland team was as natural as supporting Fermanagh in the Ulster final. Also from what I remember some in the Protestant community were also very interested in and supportive of Fermanagh’s attempts to conquer a nine-county Ulster.

By the 1990s though, things had got more heated, fuelled by aggro between Billy Bingham and Jack Charlton in World Cup qualifying games. Then there came the issue of northern Catholic boys starting to play for the Republic, rather than the Northern Irish team.

Often symbols and actions such as playing the British national anthem before games have been cited as reasons for this ‘nationalist’ reluctance to embrace the team that represents the territory where they live.

On the other hand, the traditional Protestant support base would say that a diluted version of their team’s identity provides no guarantees that Catholics would support such a side. But I think that’s wrong.

You only have to look at the fact Michael O’Neill is the manager and several of his key players are Catholic. But they keep their heads down, staying quiet in more ways than one when they’re put in their place, every time they line up to hear the anthem before a game.

If the anthem changed to something like Danny Boy and the whole language around the team was one that reflected a shared society, then there’d be a greater sense of that team belonging to everyone.

But then that’s a microcosm of the place as a whole. That’s why this article isn’t simply about football. It’s about identities and divided loyalties and asking why soccer seems to have become a political line in the sand.

Sports such as rugby and boxing seem able to operate on an All-Ireland basis, with competitors garnering equal support from both communities. Soccer’s the only mainstream game that seems to bring politics not so much onto the pitch but to everything that happens around it.

And yet this is a sport that styles itself as ‘the beautiful game.’ At times it is and looking back on those tournaments of the 1980s leading up to the World Cups of ‘Italia 90’ and ‘USA 94’, it was a glorious time to be a fan of football teams representing parts of the island of Ireland.

It was also a time when each community seemed happier to laud the achievements of the other in sporting competitions, rather than in some cases downplaying achievements and importance of particular sports.

I don’t know if such days will ever come again or whether very soon there might even be one Irish soccer team the same as there is in rugby. In the meantime, it’s time to sit back and watch the Euros if you’re into the football and if you’re not, take a wee holiday. Just avoid Germany!

Paul Breen is @paulbreenauthor on X