ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with Englishness, Frenchness and Germanness than with England’s rapport with Europe and European integration. Despite European integration’s social content and impact, the study of this process remains dominated by research objects centred upon European Union, national and local institutions together with their organisational partners. Such analyses have usefully identified the contours of a “European space of public action” which structures the resources and behaviour of institutional actors. Approaches which target an “interest in European-level politics” continue to overshadow more fundamental questions about the state of contemporary identities in European societies. The validation of hypotheses could have stimulating consequences for European integration theory. The chapter presents a preliminary discussion of the points of view centred upon two continental footballers and the English part of their respective careers: Eric Cantona and Jurgen Klinsmann. Some lasting displacement in the conception of the non-English seems to have taken place around the sport of football.
