Well done to the marketing people at Adidas for this stroke of Scottish genius, painted onto a wall in Glasgow ahead of the European Championships which begin next week.
Football is not just a sport, it is a deep form of popular identity formation, both locally around towns and cities, and also for nations or countries.
I have travelled back and forth to England a lot from 1992 onwards. I distinctly remember summer 1996 – the summer of the Euro '96 tournament being hosted there, and of course the famous anthem Football's Coming Home – as the summer when Englishness and St George's Flags seemed to suddenly explode in popularity. Flags were flying in pubs and gardens and town centres to an extent I'd never seen before. And being from NI, I am fairly flag-conscious!
The wave of 'Cool Britannia' was a factor in Tony Blair's Labour Party coming into government less than a year later in May 1997 (remember Things Can Only Get Better?) – yet these things also enhanced the sense of individual nations within the UK. That autumn, in September 1997, the Scottish Devolution Referendum was held, and by summer 1999 Scotland had its own Parliament once again. And ever since, Scottishness has become more and more distinctive.
Englishness and Scottishness have revived and diverged over those past 25 years. Football might have kicked it all off in 1996.
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