ABSTRACT
On 28 May 2005, England’s national association football team played an international ‘friendly’ against the USA national team in Chicago. Soldier Field was filled with England fans, many of whom, unlike their American counterparts, had decorated the stadium with flags. Hundreds of St George’s Crosses, and a sprinkling of ‘Union Jacks’ were displayed in a ground intended for the other kind of ‘football’. Curiously, many chose to display the White Ensign, the flag of the Royal Navy. 2 It takes the form of a larger England flag with a Union Flag superimposed on the upper left-hand corner of the St George’s Cross. A number of fans also chose to write the name of a local football club across the flag, demonstrating allegiance to clubs as internationally renowned as Arsenal and Manchester United, to those as obscure as Crook Town, a team that languishes in the second division of the Arngrove Northern League. On display in a country where their flag is sacred and ‘soccer’ relatively insignificant, these piecemeal attempts at hijacking a flag to stress the complexities of national allegiance through football ‘fandom’ seemed to call up confluence of what might be termed English identity and sport. 3
