Epilogue Into the twenty-first century

British football may have been reinvented during the 1990s but the ‘new’ game was far from universally popular. Indeed assessments of the state of football in the early twenty-first century have varied dramatically. Optimists could point to the game’s cultural and commercial advances. With increasing media interest, it could be argued, football’s relatively narrow social base widened to embrace sections of the population who had been driven out in previous decades: the affluent middle class, female supporters and families, in particular. In this sense, it was arguably more a ‘people’s game’ than it had been at almost any point in its history. Outside the stadiums themselves, football became difficult to escape. Stephen Wagg has talked of the ‘ubiquitous’ nature of the twenty-first century game: ‘it has become a sea of public discourse in which we all care to swim’ and ‘part of the popular cultural air that the people of many societies breathe’. ¹ Politicians and public figures could no longer decry or ignore it as most had done for much of the previous century. Football clearly mattered to the media and significant sections of the population, and, as such, the state of the game and the fortunes of its representative sides emerged as key topics of public interest. Writers focusing specifically on England have also outlined the changing public perception of the England football team during the 1990s and the way in which the older image of the aggressive hooligan fan was replaced by a newly inclusive ‘sense of national community’ and ‘a new national sporting identity for English football’. ²