Why Don't Our Three Lions Roar Anymore?

I came away from yesterday's England game feeling the same old familiar feelings: anger, disgust, shame, humiliation. For once these feelings had nothing to do with the result, however, or even the performance of the players. It was the behaviour of the fans that turned me. The fans who, in all their infinite wisdom, decided to turn on one of their own players. Ashley Cole was the victim of the boo boys today, but it could just as easily have been any of the players who turned out at Wembley last night to represent their country.

I'm not going to tell you that the performance was a classic, or defend Ashley Cole for his mistake. The game wasn't great, the performances not much better than average, and Ashley Cole's mistake horrendous. Yet to boo one of our own players like that is, to a patriotic countryman such as myself, only a fraction short of treason. Every football fan knows of the Ashley Cole saga that has filled the newspapers the last couple of years; and as a West Ham fan myself - no stranger to losing players to more glamorous clubs offering bigger wages - I can sympathise with the plight of the Arsenal fans, but that does not change the fact that last night, when he stepped out onto the turf at Wembley, Ashley Cole was not a Chelsea player. As soon as he pulled on that England shirt he became a representative of the country - all petty club rivalry should have been forgotten. That, after all, is what international competition is all about - the best players coming together from their respective clubs and uniting to represent England. It has never been easy, and as England fans we're all aware of the tremendous difficulty these players have when it comes to gelling on the pitch. Capello is an excellent coach and he's doing a superb job so. The last thing he needs - the last thing any of us need - is to have the petty moans of a few fickle fans disrupting the morale for everyone.

Where have all these boo boys come from? That is a question that has a puzzled me for a while. In recent years booing has become rife in football but there was a time when fans booing their own players was totally unheard of. It's not just Ashley Cole we're talking about: Frank Lampard has taken a huge amount of stick recently. I've been a stern critic of Lampard the last few years (nothing to do with West Ham, I assure you), but in the end my opinion of Lampard is just that - an opinion. I would never boo him for playing for England. No way. Other players who have had jeers aimed at them include Steven Gerrard, Rio Ferdinand, Paul Robinson, Emile Heskey and of course, David Beckham.

When I think about it, it seems to me that David Beckham is where it all started. After getting sent off against Argentina, someone decided that his crime was great enough to warrant being booed at every possible occasion thereafter. Under the increasing pressure of these boos - and the chants, some of which were very personal and aimed at his family, and certainly overstepped the boundaries of ordinary banter - David Beckham proved himself. He stood tall in front of the hostile crowds and showed himself to have more courage than any of the idiots who had been hurling abuse at him and his family. In spite of what he was subjected to, Beckham went on to become the saviour of the England team and a firm favourite with the fans. I'd like to believe that this was the reason behind the booing suffered by Ashley Cole last night - and all the other England players who have been on the receiving end of a hostile crowd over the last few years. Maybe the jeers were supposed to inspire the players, harden their resolve, and test their mettle. Though somehow I doubt it.

If you find one of these booers and ask them to explain their actions you'll find them at something of a loss for words. I was out in Barcelona to watch the Andorra-England game and a few players came under the fans' expert scrutiny there - Lampard, Rooney and Downing were the main targets. At half time, with the score at 0-0, the boos rang around the Olympic Stadium. The man I'd been standing beside was a sensible, knowledgeable man who had spent most of the first forty-five minutes applauding the efforts of the England players, acknowledging the superiority of the team, and grumbling that things “simply haven't gone our way so far.” Yet as soon as that half-time whistle blew he transformed into a snarling, jeering animal, shaking his fists at the England players and screaming and cursing at them for their sub-par performance. He wasn't the only one either - I felt distinctly out of place as I clapped the players off the field. It seemed difficult to believe that all the people around me had turned up simply so they could shout and scream and boo and swear at the players on the pitch, but it seemed to be so.

Somewhere along the line, people in this country have stopped liking footballers. They are sick and tired of hearing of their prima donna behaviour; of their greedy demands; of their insatiable desire for larger wage packets. Of course, this tabloid portrayal is actually true in the case of a few of the players, but these are a minority in the game. Yes, I know they earn ridiculous amounts of money for a “job” which we'd all love to do; and I know that it's frustrating to watch a player sulk like a child when things don't go his way on the pitch; and most of all, I understand that it's difficult for the fans to accept the massive changes that have come about in the game. Money has become the most important factor in a profession that was once driven by loyalty. The gulf between the fans and the players is becoming ever wider and it's unlikely that things will ever return to the “good old days” when a footballer was just another person in the street. But the boos will never heal the rift. They will only make it worse. And if we want to have a chance of taking home the World Cup in 2010, the boos will have to stop.

I still remember 1996, when the country was gripped with football fever. We should get behind the players like we did back then. We should bring back “Three Lions” - now there was a football song - and sing it from the stands. One of the biggest gripes among today's England fans is the apparent “lack of passion” in our current England team; but where is the passion in the fans nowadays? Our national pride has disappeared and it is the responsibility of all of us, fans and players alike, to bring it back. Fans must stop wasting their breath booing their players and start using it to get behind the team. Sing “Three Lions.” That's the spirit our England team needs… We need eleven lions on the pitch, and another ninety thousand in the stands.