Are self-deprecation and sexual repression at the heart of English football? Harry Pearson thinks it may be so
The English are routinely disparaging about English football. Part of it is frustration at years of failure, but mainly it is a way of distancing ourselves from other English people. Our ancestors long ago perfected the art of self-deprecation once removed. When the English speak of the English they are not speaking of themselves but of, you know, those other “typical” English people. Thus when an English person says that “the English are sexually repressed”, what they are actually telling you is: “I am not sexually repressed.”
