Can Football Ever Come Home? Nostalgia, melancholia and the beautiful game ft. Jack Black

How are nostalgia and melancholia connected to football? And are they 'political'? In this episode, co-hosts Guy and Francesco talk to Sheffield Hallam University's Jack Black about the meaning of the popular English football song, "It's Coming Home" and how melancholy and nostalgia are part and parcel of football culture in England and beyond. That sets up a wider discussion about nostalgia in football and its connection to politics, especially those on the far right.

A version of Jack's book chapter, Desire, Drive and the Melancholy of English Football: It's (not) Coming Home," which is discussed in the episode, is available here.

This is our last episode before we take a summer break. We'll be back at the start of September!

Transcript

Can Football Ever Come Home? Nostalgia, melancholia and the beautiful game ft. Jack Black

Francesco Belcastro 00:09

Hello and welcome to a new episode of the FootPol podcast, the podcast where football meets politics. I'm one of your co -hosts, Dr. Francesco Belcastro, and here with me is my other co -host, Dr. Guy Burton. 

Francesco Belcastro 00:19

Hello Guy, how are you? 

Guy Burton 00:21

Hi Francesco, good to hear from you. Good to see you again. How are you doing? 

Francesco Belcastro 00:25

I'm all right. I'm a bit melancholy today because it's our last episode, isn't it? It is before the holidays. 

Guy Burton 00:34

It's our last episode for, you know, for a few, well, just about six weeks or so, but we'll be back at the beginning of September. 

Francesco Belcastro 00:39

So we will. Yeah, we will. 

Guy Burton 00:41

So yeah, but, um, yeah, but I liked the way you slipped in melancholy there as well, didn't you? 

Francesco Belcastro 00:46

Exactly. Yeah. Because why, why Guy? 

Guy Burton 00:49

Because that is the subject matter of today's podcast. We're actually going to be talking about nostalgia and melancholy in football and more with particular reference to English football. 

Guy Burton 00:59

But I think, you know, we may, if we can, talk a little bit more about that in football, more generally modern football as well. And so it's going to be a really interesting topic, I think, because it's, you know, quite topical, particularly given, you know, we're putting this out just as the Euros are coming to an end. 

Guy Burton 01:17

So did England win the Euros or not? Did, did football come home or not? So that's the question. So... 

Francesco Belcastro 01:25

Yeah. Yeah, we don't know now, we don't know who's going to win the Euros, we don't know who's going to win the Copa America. So all of us could have reasons to be happy or sad. We shall see this soon. Now I really want to introduce our guest. 

Francesco Belcastro 01:40

So, yeah, great. So our guest is Jack Black. Now, Jack is a associate professor of culture media sport at Sheffield Hallam University. His research is very interdisciplinary, focused on a lot of topics, including political representation, with specific attention to race and racism. 

Francesco Belcastro 01:57

He's looked at sport, comedy, political ecology, nationalism and national identity. Luckily for us, a lot of these have to do with the topics of our podcast. Jack is the author of numerous scholarly articles, as well as solo author books, including The Psychology of Race: A Lacanian approach to racism and racialization. 

Francesco Belcastro 02:16

It was published by Routledge. Race, Racism and Political Correctness in Comedy: Psychoanalytic exploration, and was co -editor of Sport and Physical Activity in Catastrophic Environments, Routledge. 

Francesco Belcastro 02:30

The book chapter that we'll discuss, particularly desire driving the melancholy of English football is not coming home, which was published in Critical Issues in Football, Routledge again. It was by Will Roberts, Stuart Wingham and our former guest on the show, Alex Culvin. 

Francesco Belcastro 02:46

And that's how we found out, actually, that's the connection there that brought us to Jack's work. So, Jack, welcome to the podcast and great having you. 

Jack Black 02:57

Hello fellas, yeah, thank you for inviting us. Jack. 

Francesco Belcastro 03:00

So impressive academic CV, but I'm sure you're a football fan as well. So who's your football club? 

Jack Black 03:06

I am a football fan and I'm a Manchester United supporter. 

Francesco Belcastro 03:11

All right, I've got United support in my family, so they're gonna be happy to hear that. 

Jack Black 03:18

I suppose all the Liverpool and Leeds fans are now turning off the podcast, unfortunately. We're not going to listen to him talking about it! That is always the risk! 

Francesco Belcastro 03:26

Yeah. 

Guy Burton 03:28

Are you feeling more optimistic, you know, sort of in the wake of the [FA} Cup, the Cup win, or do you think it's 

Jack Black 03:36

It's a yeah, it was a bizarre season. Yeah, I am. I am. I think there's I think there's some younger players coming through, which I think there's enough to build a team around. I was probably if you speak to my dad or brother, they'll know I was being very, very critical of Ten Haag before that cup game. 

Jack Black 04:10

But the way they played was better, the sort of the structure, the formation was good, the style of football they played was better. So yeah, I'm fully behind 10 hag now and can't wait for the next season. 

Jack Black 04:19

I think it's impossible. So he yeah, I'm fully behind him now. Perhaps this is what it was like with Ferguson. He was in a similar position, wasn't it? The start of his career at the FA Cup. So it has been better on the 10 hack, I will say that it was just it was just a very frustrating season. 

Jack Black 04:36

They didn't see... Yeah, I think it was more that the failure to try somewhere else that was getting to me a bit. Do you get to go to many other games at all or not? I do I do. I'm only I'm only about an hour outside Manchester. 

Jack Black 04:45

So since I've been I've been living in the north now for over 10 years. So I guess one of the best things I can regularly, I regularly go see United and I often I grew up in this in, thank God, my dad was a United fan. 

Jack Black 04:58

Hence why I support the club. I was raised United fan, but I grew up in Essex. So I think I think one of the there's an issue there about living in the south sport and obviously a northern team. But one of the things I can now say is I think I saw United get beat twice last season three nil at home. 

Jack Black 05:17

So I feel like there's some in some sort of stripes in relation to following this team that it's definitely been a lot more hard work over the past 10 years than what it was, which was nothing but pure joy. 

Guy Burton 05:31

Yeah, well, so that sort of brings, brings us I guess to the the subject matter that we want to talk to you today because, you know, if anything, you know, Man U fans over the last decade or so it's been quite a melancholic experience. And of course, that's the sort of the some of the work that you've been doing on uh, you know in relation to the to to England and so what we wanted to start with is that this

Guy Burton 05:53

chapter which you worked on, "Desire, drive and the melancholy of English football," in it you talk about the difference between morning and melancholy in that the former morning is a kind of processing of loss while the latter really and you know melon- sorry, melancholy, you know denies it. And I was wanting to explain a little bit more what that means in terms of both English nationalism, Britain's relationship to its imperial past and then more specifically in relation to to football and the English football team 

Jack Black 06:25

Yeah, it's a good question. Thank you. So I suppose one of the ways in which I can begin to answer that is first of all, to frame it in relation to a sort of a project really now that I've been working on since since this chapter came out, I think this chapter was my first sort of attempt approaching this project and primarily what this project's involved in is taking psychoanalytic theory, in particularly the work of Jacques Lacan and applying it to support. 

Jack Black 06:51

We have a sociology of sport, we have a psychology of sport, but no one's really looked at how we can apply the ideas of Lacan as well as other psychoanalytic theorists and use them to make sense of sport. 

Jack Black 07:04

So I suppose that sort of frames what I was trying to do primarily in this chapter. Now, when you approach both mourning and melancholy, the most common sort of perception of those two ideas stems primarily from Freud. 

Jack Black 07:20

And what Sigmund Freud would argue was he said that he says melancholy is when you can't get over a sense of loss. So, for instance, the loss of a loved one. And what he tried to encourage was a process of mourning where eventually you would not necessarily get over, but you would learn to move beyond the loss that you've felt. 

Jack Black 07:41

You'd have some way of managing that loss as part of your life, so it didn't lead to any sort of psychic dysfunction. And I think that's quite the common perception we have. I think if we were to talk about these two concepts, when somebody dies, we talk about you're in a process of mourning. 

Jack Black 07:57

Now, eventually, at some point, you're meant to leave that process of mourning, you know, you can't stay forever there. Whereas the melancholic is seen as someone who doesn't really get over it, someone who perhaps might feel a little bit disenchanted or disenfranchised from the world around them because of it. 

Jack Black 08:13

So that's the sort of Freudian interpretation. What I'm really interested in, though, is exploring the work of Jacques Lacan and he offers a slight reversal of those two concepts. One of the things to know about Lacan's theorizing of both the subject and I would argue the society, is that it's grounded in a sense of lack. 

Jack Black 08:32

For Lacan, the subject is related to a constitutive lack, which both forms the sort of their relationship to the world. And one way that's expressed is through desire. So for Lacan, desire is something that is never ever satisfied. 

Jack Black 08:47

For desire to exist, you must constantly be desiring the next object and then the object after that, you might, for instance, get the object you desire, but then you realize that object isn't really it. 

Jack Black 08:58

And then you desire something else. We probably all experience that with regards to using new technologies or perhaps getting a new car or something or other. You think it's going to be the be all and end all and then when you get it, it never really lives up to the sort of the sort of the fantasy that you created around it. 

Jack Black 09:13

So by looking at that relationship between desire and the way in which lack, the sort of the constitutive role, the sort of inherent role, the intrinsic role that lack plays for the subject, you start to see that actually he's reversing those concepts that Freud was drawing upon. 

Jack Black 09:29

Whereas Freud, there was a preference for mourning and in many ways moving beyond one's loss. And you can't really ever do that because if loss is constitutive, if the sense of lack is integral to the subject, then you can't ever really move beyond it. 

Jack Black 09:45

And it's in particular, the philosopher Slavoj Žižek who notices this and draws it out in what he says is this melancholic position. So for him, he argues that a melancholic is someone who has the object that they desire, but they've lost the desire for it. 

Jack Black 09:59

So they are no longer on that treadmill of desire. I think of it that way. They're no longer thinking which is the next object and that they have the object, but they've lost that desire for it. So for me, this offered a really interesting perspective, not just on the relationship between mourning and melancholia, but also how we relate to sport. 

Jack Black 10:18

If we think for most fans, sport is inherently characterized by loss. Our teams lose more than they ever win. I actually teach PE students and I often say to them at the start of their sort of the module I taught, well clearly we all like sport but we're all a bunch of losers because if any of us really, if we hadn't lost as much, I don't think any of us would be in this room now having this discussion, 

Jack Black 10:43

we'd probably be doing it professionally. But even for the professionals, this sense of lack, this sense of loss is intrinsic to their relationship to sport. So for me this was something that was really interesting about fandom. 

Jack Black 10:54

Perhaps there's a certain sort of melancholy to fandom, a sort of relationship to loss that is actually intrinsic to being a sports fan and in particular being a football fan. So I suppose what I'm getting at here is something that is integral to fandom in general but there's something specific perhaps about England because I don't know any other country that for me made a melancholic song about loss, 

Jack Black 11:18

a song that is regularly played during tournaments and is regularly played both in popular media, on radios and television but also in the grounds as well. So for me that was a really interesting thing I wanted to explore. 

Jack Black 11:31

It perhaps made have said something about the relationship as you mentioned there in your first part of the question about the relationship that England and Britain has to their former imperial past. I think the most well -known interpretation of this is Paul Gilroy's Postcolonial Melancholia, where he fundamentally, one thing he does do in that book is he draws upon a Freudian interpretation. 

Jack Black 11:54

So for him he's referring to melancholia as something that can't be got past, it can't be overcome and explores that in the various ways in which the imperial past continually haunts the British identity, forms part of a sort of a neurotic preoccupation for the English. 

Jack Black 12:14

So that's one way in which predominantly I'd say more for the English as I would argue them being the imperial nation. That's something that I really think haunts accounts of English history. 

Francesco Belcastro 12:25

Sorry, can I ask you one thing? What is the question for... what is the song for people that are not British or English or not football fans? What is the song you're referring to? 

Jack Black 12:36

So the song I'm referring to is, and I'll get the full title, the song is called Three Lions Football's Coming Home, and it's performed by David Baddiel, Frank Skinner, obviously the two comedians, and then they have the Lightning Seeds as the band who sort of supports them. 

Jack Black 12:53

It came out in 1996 before the Euros, I think that was when it was popularized, obviously Lightning Seeds at the time were sort of Britpop band, yeah, and I suppose that was its birth, and I think I'm almost certain that every time there's an international football tournament it enters the charts again, it tends to have this sort of return that we always return to it as something. 

Jack Black 13:20

I was just interested in what that said really, what that song was, in fact it keeps coming back, it must say something about being an English fan, about an English fan's relationship to football and being, and I suppose the England team in that respect. 

Francesco Belcastro 13:34

Now, that's very interesting because sort of from a non -English football fan, a lot of it doesn't sound really nostalgic. I mean, it's England fans are often perceived as quite actually...

Guy Burton 13:47

Arrogant?

Francesco Belcastro 13:47

...optimistic. And I mean, I wouldn't say arrogant because you need to win something to be arrogant!

Francesco Belcastro 13:55

I'm joking! 

Guy Burton 13:57

But if I may jump in here, that's kind of maybe the interpretation that a lot of, you know, outsiders, foreigners think when they hear the song, It's Coming Home. They think how entitled can the British- the English be to think that football belongs to them and it's coming back to them, right? 

Guy Burton 14:12

But that's not how it was initially perceived, right? 

Jack Black 14:18

No, no, I mean, I don't, I don't think anybody went out to, as you say, to make, say, say in the call it an arrogant or whatever, or a pompous sort of song. And I definitely think I definitely think there's almost two worlds. 

Jack Black 14:28

The problem is, and the first one would probably exist to the media, you know, and, and the, and the popular, you know, the popular return of the song, you know, it's used on adverts, it's used to promote televisions, that sort of thing. 

Jack Black 14:41

And I suppose from an outside perspective, yeah, I mean, the nature of the song, It's Coming Home, you know, as if football, you know, we invented football, therefore, it's got to come back home to us, we own the game, does sort of tend towards that. 

Jack Black 14:52

But for me, I don't think that is on the ground, how it's necessarily experienced by English fans, you know, this is something that has really emerged under the Southgate era. And perhaps, really, I don't know, perhaps I really, I don't know if it's because I was thinking about these sort of ideas and these sort of theoretical concepts around the same time. 

Jack Black 15:10

But, you know, after England's poor performance, I think, was it 2016? Was it the 2016 Euros? I always get Euros and World Cups muddled up with the years. But when they were knocked out to Iceland, you know, after that, you know, it's hard work. 

Jack Black 15:24

I remember, you know, the next tournament starting in which would have been 2018, the World Cup, and it being a chore, like I had, you know, I've got a group of friends that I regularly go and watch England with in the pub. 

Jack Black 15:35

And it was almost like, you know, we were, it became a chore to organize what time we were getting to the pub... it was just an obligation as such. But at the same time, so much of sport kind of gets enveloped in that obligation. 

Jack Black 15:48

Now, I mentioned at the start about being a Manchester United fan, you know, once we knew we weren't qualifying for Europe, you know, Champions League, that, you know, the season became just this obligation, I had to, you know, I was watching the game, you know, it became a chore. 

Jack Black 16:01

So I think there is this disparity, perhaps, between how the song is often perceived. You know, it's very easy to collect, you know, to stereotype fans in that sort of respect. And I do think perhaps, you know, there is a certain negative stereotype. 

Jack Black 16:16

But England, you know, bring it on themselves with obviously the football violence and the, you know, you only have to go on Twitter to see, you know, the nonsense that is often professed. But I think for the large majority of English fans, you know, not, you know, not necessarily the ones that have traveled out there. 

Jack Black 16:30

But for those who are having to, you know, make sure to get the kids in bed before the game starts, make sure dinner's been sorted, all those obligations that you've got to get done just to sit and watch the game. 

Jack Black 16:40

And then you might end up watching the game and be like, what am I doing watching this? There's something else going on there. And I, to me, there's something unique this is why psychoanalysis is really important, because that speaks to the unconscious investment, the unconscious enjoyment that we have from when we obtain from sport. 

Jack Black 16:56

It's not I don't think it's necessarily about winning in that regard. I think there's something else. I think if we won everything, we wouldn't enjoy sport would be my own. 

Francesco Belcastro 17:04

I mean, you worked also on national identity, right, and these iterations on the English national team seems to have kind of challenged all the stereotypes they want to see with English football. Players in particular, I mean, Marcus Rashford is not here this year, but they serve the whole like Black Lives Matter movement, they're taking the knee. 

Francesco Belcastro 17:23

Does that somehow play in the background of these discussions of sort of, does that play a role or in the end, it's England, it's England? 

Jack Black 17:32

I think, I think, I think you hit, sort of, I think you get at something really important there. And it's kind of how I finished the chapter because that was one of the glorious things from about 2018 onwards was just the, you know, it was a, you know, you know, England is a multicultural nation inherently, you're going to be multicultural if you if you had an empire at one point as well. 

Jack Black 17:49

And it was almost you know, here was a group of English lads. I think, I think the representation of that team as well geographically I think you know there was like, there was a good proportion of players from the north from the south. 

Jack Black 18:01

I think more from the north. And, but yeah it was a multicultural diverse team. And I think I make the point that actually, you know, then missing the penalties was the most English thing to do you couldn't you know I mean that in that they've just been knocked out early of a competition so yeah I do, I do, I do think there's a certain sort of there's something about the team perhaps that was that was that was shining through during this particular, 

Jack Black 18:40

this particular period and again, you know, not necessarily... you know, I like to see that the melancholy of that success was something that I was really interested in. 

Francesco Belcastro 18:50

Thank you, that's very interesting and I think something that perhaps separates this recent English team from the previous ones. 

Guy Burton 19:00

Yeah, can we actually come just come back to the the song itself though when it was when it was maybe for listeners who or who are of a slightly younger age and don't remember 1996, you know, could you tell, you know, sort of explain what the song was was really about, you know, at the time, because, of course, it has taken on these either other interpretations and ideas since, hasn't it? 

Jack Black 19:22

Yes, yeah. 

Jack Black 19:23

I was six years old when the song came out. 

Guy Burton 19:26

Yeah, okay, fine. I'm clearly older than all of you, I know! 

Jack Black 19:30

So, I will say this, I have two early memories, I remember my brother being born and the next thing I remember is Euro 96, I remember being allowed to stay up and watch the penalties, I remember the merchandise that was hosted in England, I remember the mugs, I remember the excitement, I remember playing Spain in that tournament, I remember David Seaman had like a multi-, he didn't have a multi-coloured jersey, he was like... 

Guy Burton 20:00

Well, I mean, but that was a period where, you know, they were all trying to outdo each other. I remember Jorge Campos of Mexico had even worse taste, but there you go. 

Francesco Belcastro 20:09

That is fantastic jersey, the Campos one! What are you on about? Heh heh.

Jack Black 20:14

But, uh, but yeah, so you remember, and I remember, you know, I remember, I remember the Scotland game. I remember, you know, I'm almost certain it was on a Saturday. Like I remember the excitement.

Jack Black 20:21

 Yeah. So these are all early memories that I, that I have. And I just think, but I think I suppose what the, you know, I suppose the song was trying to tap into that sort of Britpop culture of the time, that sort of, you know, it was very much, um, I suppose a very, you know, laddish type culture that it was sort of feeling. 

Jack Black 20:40

And obviously David, Baddiel and Frank Skinner had their, they had a football show at the time, didn't they? 

Guy Burton 20:46

Yeah. Fantasy Football. 

Jack Black 20:46

Yeah. Fantasy Football. So that was obviously popular. Um, but I think for me, it's the fact that he keeps returning, you know, there is something, there's something there about the song, which I would argue perhaps takes it out of its historical context, you know, in that as a form of explanation. 

Jack Black 21:01

For me, there's something real about the song, you know, calm would talk about something that reoccurs the realness of something that comes back through. And that for me shines, you know, shines through the song. 

Jack Black 21:11

Hence why it, you know, it's, it's, it returns each year. Um, which is interesting. There's some sort of libidinal investment we have in it, perhaps that something. 

Guy Burton 21:20

But I do recall at the time, because it was the first major tournament held in England and since the previous World Cup, which they'd won. So it was kind of, I mean, the idea of football coming home was, you know, we finally were hosting a tournament again, you know, after, and if you think, you know, the decade before, which was, you know, sort of rife of hooliganism with Heysel, you know, Hillsborough, 

Guy Burton 21:40

you know, it was not, football was not in a good place. You know, we had just had the Premier League, you know, born a few years earlier, sort of, becoming more of a sort of a family, you know, oriented game, you know, game, almost entertainment. 

Guy Burton 21:55

So there was a sense that it was a safer, you know, put more, so it was much more positive than it was in the past. And yet, oddly, within it, there was this kind of, you know, sort of sadness in the song, because it was talking about 30 years of hurt, you know, we've, you know, we won the World Cup, but we've never been close since. 

Francesco Belcastro 22:14

This is the advantage of having a very old co-host. If you ask him about how it was in 1966, he'll tell you! What the mood was in the country then. Can we know? 

Jack Black 22:29

You can learn that. No, I think that's I think you hit a good point because you can learn that through the song. I think I think the song begins with a sort of I think it's Alan Hanson, you know, criticized in the England team. 

Jack Black 22:39

And like you said, it's the song is repeating past defeats in that respect. There's nothing actually really positive about the song beyond beyond. It makes a few references to obviously qualifying in Italy, doesn't it? 

Jack Black 22:52

But it's you know, I always I always I wrote down some of the lines here that really sort of got to it. And I think these ones, you know, sing along at home if you want to sort of the lines, you know, "Everyone seems to know the score. 

Jack Black 23:06

"They've seen it all before. They just know they're so sure that England's going to throw it away, going to blow it away." I mean, this is this isn't to me, that's not an arrogant, triumphant song. Really, the words being played out there and it's and it's, you know, it's something perhaps that's all going through the back of our minds whenever we are going to blow it away, if not during the game, at least during penalties, 

Jack Black 23:30

perhaps, or or missing a penalty as Kane, you know, did so well in the last, last tournament. 

Francesco Belcastro 23:36

This idea of the difference between sort of the original meaning and what it means particularly to like all the supporters I suppose a lot of national teams now it's fascinating. I mean I think people might have watched the videos of Danish supporters singing England, England it's never coming home. I mean to them it means something quite different right? It's kind of they're picking on, on this perceived... And I was joking about Guy's age but I'm just a couple of years younger so I shouldn't... But I was wondering if I could ask if you remember... 

Jack Black 24:03

Sorry, just to jump in, I think Italy, they said it's coming Rome or something. 

Francesco Belcastro 24:09

Yeah, it's coming Rome in the last one. Yeah, in the Euros, yeah. 

Jack Black 24:12

Yeah, it's clearly they sort of call it banter or what, but the songs are meant to hurt. 

Jack Black 24:17

You know, in football chants are meant to hurt the opposition. And this is something that they're clear, you know, perhaps that's something, you know, something brilliant about the English is that we haven't got to necessarily, we can give people the ammo to be awful to us as well! 

Jack Black 24:32

But, you know. 

Guy Burton 24:34

But to be fair as well, I mean, when you hear it being sung on the terraces, right, they don't sing those lines which you just gave us, right? They tend to just do the, you know, "Football's coming home, it's coming home," right? 

Guy Burton 24:45

So if that's all sort of other fans here, then of course it sort of suggests a certain sort of entitlement on the side of the English. 

Francesco Belcastro 24:56

Can I ask one thing that perhaps has to do a bit more with with the politics of nostalgia in general? No, I mean, we spoke about the English national team, major tournaments. One thing that seems to me, and I see also from my sort of interaction with with friends or football fans back home, there is almost like a sort of I don't know if you want to call it a romantic romanticized version of football that was better in the old days, 

Francesco Belcastro 25:22

which I mean, partially might be based on sort of the world kind of super capitalism. It was in some ways it was, but it's also like a very, very distant from reality sort of idea of football. And this is something that almost mirrors what you see with some political ideology, right wing movements, especially populist parties in many European countries also use these sort of narrative of nostalgia. 

Francesco Belcastro 25:54

Is that is that there's something about these that applies beyond football, would you say, or is it is it different in football? Are we talking about the same thing? 

Jack Black 26:04

Yeah, I think I think they're well, I suppose I suppose, you know, nostalgia is this is a universal concept that in some respects has a form and it can be applied to different contexts, different contents. 

Jack Black 26:16

And, you know, I love the link you make there with with far right parties, because I do think, you know, I would separate melancholia from nostalgia as being two different things, especially in the sort of the Lacanian interpretation of melancholy, which I've followed here. 

Jack Black 26:29

But for me, nostalgia is something that the conservative, right leaning far right parties are brilliant at sort of using and manipulating and managing as part of their rhetoric. And it's something you see as part of all those those parties as well. 

Jack Black 26:42

You know, perhaps most famously in Trump's, you know, Make America Great Again. You know, this idea that you have to return to some form of nostalgic past. And I suppose what the conservative or sort of, you know, far right parties are really good at doing or the right is very good at doing, shall I say, is that it it it sort of it relies upon a certain it relies upon a nostalgic past that never really existed and also can never, 

Jack Black 27:05

ever be returned to. So it can be very emotional and it can, you know, pull on the heartstrings, so to speak, it never can actually ever be obtained. So in that respect, it's always has the object that they want to turn to. 

Jack Black 27:18

Call it the ideal past that they must return to, is always something that can never actually ever be accessed. It always has to, you know, be put back. Hence why, again, you know, I haven't seen so too much of it yet, but Trump can probably, you know, replay the Make... 

Jack Black 27:34

You were meant to Make America Great Again in your first term. Now, in this election, you can go back and say, oh, no, we'll give it another go. And I suppose there's something really interesting there and how that gets adopted in it for different purposes. 

Jack Black 27:47

You know, I would love for the left to be far better at perhaps using nostalgia if possible, perhaps that might be in a way in which they relate to the loss which nostalgia reflects. But I think in football, again, it makes some it makes, it makes an important point to make, partly because I think it says something about how we relate to the teams that we, that we might that we might enjoy. 

Jack Black 28:11

You know, if you speak to a Nottingham Forest fan, you know, they're very much nostalgic about that particular, about the Brian Clough era and also the champion of- the success in Europe. And I think it also, you know, if you speak to any Leeds fan, they also harp on about the two times they won. 

Jack Black 28:27

They won the league as well, you know, under their period of success. But I think, I think nostalgia is a bit of a trick. It's a, it's a, you know, it's a it would be a good, you know, it's a quicksand. 

Jack Black 28:38

You know, you can get sunk in. It's a bit of a swamp. You're never going to get what it is you think you're trying to return to. You can sell it. You can you see people like Nigel Farage do that. You see, as I say, many of the far right parties you were mentioned there in Europe be very good at that. 

Jack Black 28:53

But what past you're actually returning to is never really ever explained nor ever given any sort of evidence that it is ever returned to. So I think that's something to always just be wary of nostalgia. 

Jack Black 29:05

I don't know if there's ever really perhaps any sort of radical potential in nostalgia, which is why I would push. It's why I would look for instances of melancholia, perhaps, instead of nostalgia. 

Francesco Belcastro 29:17

No, I'd agree. It's a conservative thing, isn't it? It's not. You're never really progressive. 

Guy Burton 29:24

Perhaps they left the...

Jack Black 29:24

Sorry, go on here. 

Guy Burton 29:25

No, no, but would you say then that the same sort of concept can apply in football as well? So, you know, football fans can be nostalgic for, you know, their past glories, but they can never return to it because I mean, instead what you do is you just get a new age. 

Guy Burton 29:40

I mean, I guess, for example, you as a Man U fan, you know, obviously you're not gonna go back to the Alex Ferguson period, but you know, you've got the promise of something else, I suppose. 

Jack Black 29:54

Yes, well, I suppose, but then, you know, to me, promise would always be, well, is, you know, is the promise to return to some former success, or is the promise to look towards something different in that respect? 

Jack Black 30:07

And I think, you know, when you mentioned there about you have different ages or different eras of clubs, you know, the success is that whatever success United now have post Ferguson is never ever going to be the success they had under Ferguson. 

Jack Black 30:20

And it will be a different style of football, a different style... I mean, we're seeing this now in the changes that that [Jim] Ratcliffe is now introducing into the club. You know, you know, that was one of the problems when Ferguson left, wasn't it, that he'd been there for so long that the club had never really evolved in, you know, in line with other football teams. 

Jack Black 30:38

So when you took off, Ferguson, you know, it was like, you know, it was like getting rid of the head, you lost everything, everything else fell apart. You know, you lost you lost other coaching staff in part, you know, for the decisions David Moyes made, but you lose, you know, you've lost it anyway. 

Jack Black 30:53

So I can appreciate what you're saying. I don't think it would necessarily be a nostalgia for the past if you're looking towards a promise for something else. I think one of the, you know, hence why, you know, if there is anything, it will be built around younger players who perhaps will have their own, their own thing. 

Jack Black 31:08

But this is my worry. I was saying this previously. My biggest fear of Manchester United was that, you know, bear in mind, they didn't win a trophy for what, five years? I was worried they were going to be the Chicago, I often say the Chicago Bulls of English football. 

Jack Black 31:20

You know what I mean? Don't win anything. No offense to Chicago Bulls fans. Don't win anything, but just live off the nostalgia of the 90s. You know what I mean? Which is what you, you know, I, you know, as a United fan, even I was starting to get sick of the class of 92 narrative, you know, give it up, fellas. 

Jack Black 31:35

You know, you're not helping now. You know what I mean? 

Francesco Belcastro 31:38

If I can add one thing, I mean, so we had a few months ago, an episode with Paul Watson as a Bristol City fan was telling us it was a bit nostalgic about when, when the club was doing much worse. I think there is, there is that component about football fans sometimes, you know, success also bring some sort of nostalgia for stadium was not so comfortable and you know, and it was only a few of us look at these new people that just come with it. 

Francesco Belcastro 32:05

So the reason isn't that a component there that.... 

Jack Black 32:09

Well, that's where I'd say our enjoyment lies. Our investment in sport lies in that struggle. So again, Lacan has this wonderful concept called jouissance, which is essentially it's untranslatable, it should never really be translated into English. 

Jack Black 32:22

But the closest thing you can get to in English is enjoyment. But it's sort of the pleasure and pain that you get from enjoyment. So I definitely think that actually, you know, what maintains our enjoyment in sport, the fact that we keep coming back to it, despite the fact it's going to be our relationship with it, it's got to be characterised more by failure than anything else, is that sense of jouissance. 

Jack Black 32:43

And I think that speaks a little bit to what you're getting at there with the sort of the struggle and the fact that there is a certain enjoyment of perhaps nostalgically looking back at that time. I mean, you can safely look back on it because the team might be in a period of better success at the minute. 

Jack Black 32:57

But, yeah, I think there's something about that. You know, what, you know, during the last 10 years, my dad has frequently said to me, you know, but, you know, Jack, I was supportive when United got relegated. 

Jack Black 33:07

You know, I was there when United went down into the, you know, into what we've been the second division at the time. So he was saying like this was all all part of it. And I said, well, this is a catastrophe. 

Jack Black 33:16

And then and he was like, well, you know, aside from really, you know, obviously Ferguson and then Matt Busby, United have always been a bit of a catastrophe, you know, you know, a catastrophe club, so to speak! 

Jack Black 33:27

You know, they've never really been run, you know, they're not run like, you know, Real Madrid or teams that have really lasted that long. So I think there was, again, something perhaps about that sort of that relationship to struggle, which is perhaps, which is something about fandom, something about the enjoyment we get from sport. 

Jack Black 33:44

Because even if your team's winning, even if your team's gone on a massive winning streak, I do think there's a certain enjoyment of it coming into an end. You know, when, you know, when invincibles, you know, when clubs have gone on for winning streaks, there is that unconscious enjoyment in

Jack Black 33:56

when's it when's it going to end? When's it going to happen? When's the loss coming? 

Guy Burton 33:59

And I think that's what makes me want to come back to the experience of the England football team, the men's football team, shall we say? Because as you've been talking about, there is this sort of melancholia, sort of desire for something lost, but was never had in the first place. 

Guy Burton 34:19

Now, in the case of, obviously, the listeners should know that we are recording this before the second stage of the Euros, so we have absolutely no idea how England's going to perform in all of this. 

Guy Burton 34:33

But if England was to actually win the Euros, does this mean that something like It's Coming Home ceases to have meaning, that song that we've been talking about? Does everything that's bound up in that sense of loss and frustration evaporate? 

Jack Black 34:56

Uh, no, no would be my answer. Only because I don't think we'd lose the song. I just think the song would represent that sense of loss, perhaps in a different way or perhaps more in a melancholic way. 

Jack Black 35:07

Because the one thing we know about sport is, is if England were to win the Euros. Um, the thing about sport is, is the second you've won the tournament, almost at what point there's, it's hard to say, you know, in a temporal succession, but almost instantly the next tournament begins, the next cycle begins, the next phase, the next round, the next game or whatever turns up. 

Jack Black 35:28

So I think what it would really bring home is that sense of we how have the object, the long for desired object. Um, perhaps there's something about just enjoying the fact that we can still probably be England. 

Jack Black 35:41

We were, you know, despite the fact we won the tournament, we're not going to suddenly now go on and win every tournament ever, you know, you know, you know, in infinity, but we're probably going to go back to that sense of this is going to be lost at some point. 

Jack Black 35:53

There's a relationship to lost there, which I think is really important. Um, as part of the fandom, I think it might even become, well, I don't know. You can't measure the popularity... I wouldn't want to say it become more popular, but I think the song will become more melancholic, perhaps we'll look back on that summer of what we 2024 and say, you know, um, you remember, you remember how awful it was at the start? 

Jack Black 36:17

But then they came through at the end or something or other. Uh, perhaps there's something about that. That's definitely how I look on the previous tournaments, you know, um, in that respect. 

Guy Burton 36:27

I mean, I do, I mean, and maybe this, I'm here, maybe here I can finally ask Francesco a question because, you know, he comes from a country which, you know, has won four World Cups and, you know, several, several Euros. 

Guy Burton 36:39

So for like England, you know, in many ways, sort of the frustration, the loss, um, is bound up in that sort of sense of English national football identity, right? Because so that's why I asked the question, whether it would, whether it changed. But when you were coming from a country like Italy, which has that sort of, you know, history of success, do you have that similar sort of, uh, sense of identity or not? 

Francesco Belcastro 37:04

No, these were very difficult to compare because Italy is a complete different sport culture. So we are way more superstitious than the Brits are. So superstition plays a much, much bigger role. So no one would ever say even in an ironic way that it's coming home because that's not a good thing to say. 

Francesco Belcastro 37:22

So I think it's obviously we have the same or there's some parallels in the same sort of in melancholy, of course, that exists. But I think it kind of... the main one you'll find among football fans was the one I referring to before, a kind of an era in which Italian football in general was better. 

Francesco Belcastro 37:40

So perhaps you have more of a kind of for a Serie A when it was the top league. 

Jack Black 37:47

Because I once spoke to an Italian about this after they won the last Europe, the last Euros, wasn't it? And he said Italy is the worst country to win these tournaments because you're so embedded... You don't really... You're more embedded in your local cultures. 

Jack Black 38:01

Yeah, I think there's another, yeah. He says Italy wins a national competition and the next day you go back to being Roman or from Napoli. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it's kind of rubbish, he went, whereas if you guys won it, the whole, you know, you're hugging fans, you know, you're hugging a Chelsea fan, you know what I mean? 

Jack Black 38:19

You know, West Ham fan, you know, God forbid, you know, you're hugging Liverpool fans that, you know, suddenly a City fan isn't as awful as you thought, you know! There's that sort of, for that, you know, that brief moment... 

Francesco Belcastro 38:29

I think definitely Italy's got more of a sort of what we call campagnilismo, right? So like local, local, yeah. So I think that component is different because Italy's got way more of a sort of, yeah... 

Jack Black 38:41

It brings it well, it does bring the country together. However, briefly, I suppose.

Francesco Belcastro 38:44

It does. It does. It definitely does. Yes. Idoes, although it's short -lived, but you do hear more reference to sort of localistic identities, even while tournament is ongoing. You hear more about that player being from that particular part of the country than you would do in England, which is, you know, it's understandable. 

Francesco Belcastro 39:05

I mean, one thing, another difference is that like... We are now getting in the last couple of decades, the first, well, sort of Italian players of African heritage, for example, something that Britain has had for very long, right? 

Francesco Belcastro 39:19

In Italy, it's a new thing, very long or relatively long, right? In Italy, it's a much, much newer thing. So these debates that in England, and perhaps in Wales and Scotland as well, have already taken place are now very much ongoing in Italy. 

Francesco Belcastro 39:34

So that's another difference. 

Guy Burton 39:37

And can I just do a little plug for one of the previous episodes that we did, which touches upon what Francesco has just been talking about, this tension between sort of national identity and local identity, when we did our episodes on Maradona, and more in particular, the second one we did, which looked at Maradona and the city of Naples, and how he played on sort of the Neapolitan public to support him during Argentina's semifinal match against Italy in the 1990 World Cup, 

Guy Burton 40:09

and how Italian fans responded and reacted to that appeal. So yeah, if you haven't heard it, we put it out a couple of weeks ago, you should go check it out. 

Francesco Belcastro 40:20

I wonder if there is a, there is an English parallel to that. Is it probably the city of Liverpool, the closest thing that England has to sort of territory with a, with a sort of... where the identity, the sort of scouser culture? No? 

Jack Black 40:35

Yeah, well, they well, I think they're quite proud. And yeah, they do, don't they see Liverpool not England? 

Francesco Belcastro 40:39

Yes.

Jack Black 40:39

...One of the Yeah, it's a type of thing. I mean, yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I often I mean, I've often said to people before, I mean, I don't, I, I would, you know, partly because of my studies and my sort of own relationship with sport is I often say I'm not a football fan. 

Jack Black 40:55

I'm a United fan. And I follow, you know, and I have to follow England. I don't really have, you know, great, you know, I don't check scores, you know, I have, I have a colleague I work with who watches every single European league, you know, knows which teams are good. 

Jack Black 41:07

That's, you know, it's almost you know, it's an obsession almost in the sense of, of the way follows it.

Francesco Belcastro 41:12

 I can sympathize with that! 

Jack Black 41:14

Right, yeah. Are you the same or?

Francesco Belcastro 41:14

A bit. A bit less because of time, but the ideal would be that I follow as much as I can.

Guy Burton 41:24

Yeah, I'm like you Jack, I just follow my teams, that's it. 

Jack Black 41:26

Yeah. Yeah, I try and I think it's perhaps it's perhaps because I don't, you know, I try and escape from the misery of it, I suppose, you know, it gets to and the nonsense of it all. I mean, it's but that's kind of why we love it, isn't it? 

Jack Black 41:37

I'm not being dismissive there of football at all. And obviously, you know, I'm calling myself not a football fan yet. Yeah, you know, I know a football type thing, but. 

Francesco Belcastro 41:46

But I mean, the only thing we learn from your research is that even if you try to run away for it, from it, melancholy will always catch you. Yeah. That would be something... 

Jack Black 41:56

Well, I think, think what you'll never escape is that sense of loss and that sense of lack. And melancholy is one way of relating to that in perhaps a more positive way than what would be, you know, than say a more conservative nostalgic perspective there or the arrogance, the hubris of saying, you know, it's come home in that regard. 

Jack Black 42:20

You know, even when the song is talking about '66 coming home, most of the people weren't alive when that was coming home. So there's always that sense of loss being played with there and manipulated. 

Jack Black 42:31

And for me, you know, just having an England side that are perhaps challenging, that are perhaps now being spoken about in the context of being possible winners might be where the fun and the enjoyment is, not necessarily winning the tournament because we'll still get more fun, I think, in unconsciousness fun in that sense of, you know, when we do lose the inevitable penalty shootout, this is what England, 

Jack Black 42:56

this is what, of course! this is what we do! This is, and that's where the collectivity comes out of it. You know, I mean, we're going to lose, you know, I'm being hopeful there when I say that it will still result... There will still be racism in football, there will still be carnage, there will still be the hooliganism and the fights, no doubt, you know, on the night of losing. 

Jack Black 43:15

But yeah, I mean, yeah, yeah, if that isn't weirdly English, then I don't know what else is as well. 

Francesco Belcastro 43:22

This has been absolutely fascinating. Guy, just before I let you in, I just wanted to remind listeners to really check out the episode that we did at the beginning of the year with David Goldblatt, because some of the aspects on the sort of collective ritual of football that you mentioned there in the case of England, David spoke about it and compliments very well what you were mentioning. 

Francesco Belcastro 43:43

Guy, you wanted to ask Jack about his next works, right? 

Guy Burton 43:48

What else are you working on? What other projects are you doing that might be of interest to listeners in and around football and politics? 

Jack Black 43:57

Yeah, so I have this, there's chapters on football in the collection, but the my forthcoming book is an edited collection done with my friend, Joseph Reynoso. He's a psycho-analyst, works in New York. And he wrote a brilliant paper called "Boston sucks." 

Jack Black 44:18

You can, he's a, he's obviously a New York Yankees fan. And you can access that via the Journal of Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society. We got talking and we put together with put together a special issue that you can now access as part of the Psychoanalysis, Culture and Society journal. 

Jack Black 44:35

It's the current issue, which will be the obviously current issue when this podcast comes out. But then we've also got an edited collection as well called Sport and Psychoanalytic Theory: What the unconscious reveals about our desires, fantasies and fears around sport. 

Jack Black 44:51

So that's that's two projects that sort of now sort of coming to an end. And then I'm currently in the process of writing a book on sport and psychoanalytic theory, drawing upon the ideas and concepts of Jacques Lacan, and seeing how they can be used to make sense of our investment in sports. 

Jack Black 45:10

What I'm really interested in here is why is it that we keep returning to sport? What is about sport that we enjoy so much? What is it that means that you guys can make a lot of enjoyment out of doing it? 

Jack Black 45:25

You know, why bother? Why do this? You know, you know, sports meant to be done in your spare time! And here you are talking about sport in your spare time! When you could be doing something far more productive, you know, like reading Lacan or someone like that!

Guy Burton 45:35

What we will do... What we will do is we'll revisit this by coming back to you and getting you to come back on and talk to talk to us about it so...!

Francesco Belcastro 45:44

No, so what I was gonna say, thanks for mentioning this idea of returning because next thing we need to do is to remind listeners to return to the podcast after our break. But I mean, the thing is, Jack, it's been absolutely fantastic. 

Francesco Belcastro 45:54

Thank you very much for your time. We've learned so much. 

Guy Burton 45:57

Thanks again, Jack. So, Francesco, before we sort of wrap up for a few weeks, what should we tell the listeners? 

Francesco Belcastro 46:04

Well, I mean, the first thing to tell listeners that we got uh, 45 episodes, I think, done the first season. And they're all fantastic. There is even a couple of them where you're not in there. So if people, even if people don't like you, which I mean, it's very, very unlikely there, David Goldblatt, for example, you're not in the episode. 

Francesco Belcastro 46:21

No, in all seriousness, the first of all, listen to go and check our episodes. Um, and, and then the second thing is that you get in touch with us because we are working, I mean, we are moving, you're moving, you're going to to a new country, I'm moving to a new house, but we're also working on new episodes and so they should get in touch and tell us, uh, what we are, um, what we are working on, what we should be working on, 

Francesco Belcastro 46:43

right? 

Guy Burton 46:44

Yeah, some in fact some of the best episodes we've done have been suggestions from listeners. And so if you've got top- ideas for topics or guests reach out to us and they can do that where, Francesco? 

Francesco Belcastro 46:54

Well, we're everywhere really. We are on Twitter X. We are on Facebook. We are on Blue Sky. There's not many people left there, but we are there. You are on LinkedIn. I'm on LinkedIn. But they can find us pretty much. 

Francesco Belcastro 47:08

And obviously in our contacts via email and stuff like that and look us up online. And then the other thing is we need people to rate, share, whatever they can do on their platforms. Please do that because it really, really helps the podcast. 

Francesco Belcastro 47:21

And we will be back in a few weeks. 

Guy Burton 47:26

Yes and if you haven't already done so subscribe to this podcast.

Francesco Belcastro 47:30

Subscribe, yeah, if you're...

Guy Burton 47:32

So that way when we come back in September it will appear in your inbox 

Francesco Belcastro 47:37

Yeah. Can I just say, thank you very much to our listeners who put up with us for eight months.

Guy Burton 47:42

 Interminable, hasn't it? 

Francesco Belcastro 47:45

It's been long for us! You can imagine for people listening to us! So thank you very much. 

Francesco Belcastro 47:49

And we really appreciate it. And it's been great. 

Guy Burton 47:53

And have a good summer, both you, Francesco, and also to Jack again, our guest. Take care, see you again in a few weeks time. 

Francesco Belcastro 48:00

Bye bye. 

Guy Burton 48:00

Have a good summer, bye.