Tackling the anxieties of the English: searching for the nation through football

‘Englishness’ can no longer be seen as equivalent to ‘Britishness’. This paper examines the role that sport, and especially conceptions of international football, has played in working out the anxieties of Englishness. Football can be seen as the negotiating tool par excellence for examining the English anomaly touching on ideas of nation, class, and race in the age of ‘after Empire’. England itself has changed and in recent years Football seems to have held a mirror up to the changing face of England. 1 1. Walvin, The Only Game, 16.