ABSTRACT
This paper analyses media coverage of the England football team in the run up to Euro 2012. The study also describes the dominant discourse of ‘low expectations’ underpinning media representations of England and considers various reasons for this. Short-term factors are considered, including the resignation of the England manager, the intra-team tensions arising from racism, along with longer-term factors, including the perceived constraints placed on the England national team’s development by the English Premier League. While these factors are important, they cannot alone, or even in combination, sufficiently explain why the discourse of ‘low expectations took such a hold over media representations of the England national team. One missing factor is the broader problems facing the economy and society, particularly the preoccupation with ‘austerity’, which has created an aura of low expectations; particularly, the tendency to represent ‘austerity’ as ‘growth’ in a ‘low expectations’ culture. Previous research has demonstrated the links between the fortunes of the wider economy and sentiments surrounding the fate of the English national team. This article takes the opportunity to reconsider these wider links in terms of an elective affinity, arguing that the discourse of ‘low expectations’ haunting the England team in the present period is the manifestation and transference of a more pervasive general lowering of expectations among the media and the political elite, concerning the present and future political economic prospects of economic growth and social prosperity.
