I’d like to tell you that I was just as bemused as the rest of the country by Victoria Beckham’s muted reaction to Jude Bellingham’s extra-time goal against Norway during England’s World Cup quarter-final match on Saturday. I can’t in good conscience say that, though. The truth is, I didn’t see her reaction (or lack thereof). I haven’t seen a single second of an England game this entire tournament.
I did see, after the fact, that much had been made of the former queen of WAG’s blank, bored expression in response to the winning goal, especially in contrast to husband and former England captain David, who leapt from his seat like an excitable golden retriever. I also saw, after the fact, that Posh’s responses during Wednesday’s semi-final garnered just as much negative attention.
This time around, she’d overcorrected, poor thing, madly overcompensating with whoops and air punches when Anthony Gordon scored England’s only goal of the match in the 55th minute. But not everyone was convinced by the raucous display; the carry-on was deemed performative by some fans, a flagrant attempt to make up for the previous game’s meme-worthy don’t-give-a-f*** energy, rather than an authentic celebration.
And it was all the more contentious, given her estranged oldest son Brooklyn’s claims in recent years that Victoria’s aggressively “happy families” narrative is all a charade for the cameras as part of Brand Beckham’s constant PR offensive (accusations the rest of the clan have vehemently denied).
Personally, I felt nothing but pity for the famously non-smiling designer; pretending to care about the beautiful game is a manoeuvre I recognise all too well, having attempted it many times myself over the years. But I’m here to give you some advice, Victoria, if you’ll indulge me: with sport, you simply cannot fake passion. Trust me, babe, I’ve tried – but we football unenthusiasts always get found out in the end.
My pretence started early. Football stickers were all the rage at primary school in the Nineties, swapped in the playground and immortalised in shiny albums. To say you didn’t support a team was tantamount to social suicide; classmates, cunning and relentless as Spanish inquisitors, could demand to know your chosen fealty at any time, followed by a barrage of quick-fire questions designed to catch you out and prove your fandom was bogus: “Who’s their top striker?” “What was their score against Tottenham last week?”
Still, this was all perfectly manageable so long as you did your research and didn’t crack under pressure. It wasn’t until Euro 1996, when England got to the semi-finals against Germany, that I actually had to physically sit and watch a match. It was on during school hours, so they wheeled a telly into the assembly hall as a mandatory “treat”.
What followed was the longest two hours of my young life; I had never experienced such excruciating boredom. Tiny men senselessly ran back and forth to a sonic backdrop of tuneless chants and crowd noises as soporific as white noise. We scored early, they equalised a quarter of an hour later, and then precisely nothing happened for the remainder.
I still remember the sharp stab of betrayal when realisation dawned that it wasn’t over after 90 minutes. There was injury time. Extra time. Penalties. I had been brought up Catholic; this, I reasoned, was what purgatory must feel like. Worse than the unendurable monotony was the exhaustion of having to feign a reaction every time somebody, seemingly anybody, got anywhere near the ball.
It did end (eventually), but the deep-seated trauma of that tedium stayed with me. To this day, the sound of a sports stadium elicits a Pavlovian response, sending me into a fugue-like state. My eyes slide off the screen as if it were made of Teflon; I cannot concentrate on what’s happening in front of me, no matter how hard I try.
To this day, the sound of a sports stadium elicits a Pavlovian response, sending me into a fugue-like state
As an adult, though, I no longer had to pretend to support a particular team and swat up on their vital statistics; there remained a lingering pressure to care any time England was playing – admitting to disinterest was too counter-cultural to contemplate.
And so, every Euro or World Cup competition, I let myself be dragged along to the pub or friends’ living rooms, feeling like a fraud in my white and red ensembles and always issuing my lacklustre cheers and half-hearted moans of disappointment a beat after everyone else – an unconvincing actor trying her best to impersonate a woman with the requisite excitement and patriotism to pass undetected.
Of course, just like Victoria’s less-than-Oscar-worthy efforts, none of it was fooling anyone. Aside from the fact that I clearly didn’t know what was going on the majority of the time, there was my tendency to try to chat to people at crucial moments. There is little more irritating, as it turns out, than persistently probing someone about their new job, telling them about your latest dating drama or commenting on the various players’ hairstyles when that person really is emotionally invested in what’s happening on the pitch.
“Football’s not really your thing, is it?” friends would ask through gritted teeth. “What do you mean? Course it is! Eng-er-land, Eng-er-land etc etc…”
But it was too late. There’s nowhere to hide with sport, you see. People can smell a faker a mile off; it wafts off us like cheap cologne. So we might as well hold our hands up and stop pretending.
That’s why this year, for the first time in my life, I gave myself permission to simply opt out. During England games, I have been, by turns: packing for a holiday; asleep; tearing up the dancefloor at a wedding; and, during the “crucial” semi-final against Argentina, watching a much more highly anticipated final of my own (episode six of Disney+’s Rivals series two).
Setting myself free from the burden of having to watch a sport I have zero interest in and from which I derive no pleasure has been nothing short of a revelation. When people have asked where I’m watching the big game, I’ve simply replied, “I’m not!” without shame or explanation. Oh, the relief!
I’d say it’s about high time Victoria Beckham allowed herself to do the same. She’s already been forced to spend far too much of her life acting the devoted soccer wifey, attending countless football matches as a mandatory part of marriage to a Premier League star. At least in her previous role as chief WAG there was a personal element in play – pretty sexy to see your spouse at the top of their game, no matter what the activity – but now, she’s a regular civvy when it comes to sports. And, clearly, football is not her jam.
The “Out of Your Mind” singer’s initial “shrug” response to England scoring was refreshingly real; rather than a “gotcha” moment, it revealed a woman who’s simply not that fussed about footie.
Honesty is the best policy, after all – so I encourage all my fellow fakers to free yourselves from faux fist-bumping and finally embrace your inner unbothered meme queen.
