The English Interview

Along with several of my classmates, I went to The Champion pub in search of good cider and an interesting English sports fan to interview. After asking three men standing at the bar if they were sport fans, I came up dry as all three men claimed they weren’t as much concerned with sports and they were politics, the complete opposite of myself. Eventually, I decided to go an alternative route and find a female to question. Kyle and I found a group of girls standing in the garden of the pub smoking and having a drink. Upon approaching them, they were certain that we were using the sports questions as a way to pick them up. However, after a long chat, we found new friends.

            The girl I interviewed was a 19-year-old Londoner by the name of Angelica. Originally from Croatia, Angelica has lived in London nearly her entire life. Her favorite sports are soccer and tennis, and she is a casual follower of both sports. Not such a big surprise, she was a Chelsea fan. Her older brother, who attends Northwestern near Chicago, and father led her to that fandom. Angelica has only been to one Chelsea match in her life, ten years ago. Though she is not afraid to represent Chelsea with a jersey or shirt while watching a match, she says she would usually only do so if her friends were doing the same.

            During our talk she mentioned attending a soccer match in Buenos Aires, Argentina a few years ago which led to our discussion about fan behavior. She said she has seen very few fights related to soccer in London, though it is not uncommon to hear her guy friends talking about brawls they witnessed after matches in a bar. I asked her if she could compare and contrast what she observed about Argentine, English, and American fan since she’s been to the United States to visit her brother in school. She was unfamiliar with American’s fandom but said that the Argentines were much more rowdy than English fans. I was also hoping to get some perspective on Croatian fandom, but she was too young when she lived there to remember anything about it.

            I attempted to turn our focus to tennis to get her perspective on a different sport, but the most we talked about was Wimbledon. She said she didn’t really care about who won, but if she had to pick, obviously it was Andy Murray. Angelica did seem to be a bit of a Roger Federer fan, however, and went on a tangent about how she really liked Swiss people so she was not upset at all that he won the title. When we discussed the Olympics, she sounded thrilled about the games taking place in London, but she wasn’t too excited about how busy the city was going to get.

            The remainder of our conversation turned out a bit better as we talked about general culture, which she was more easy-going with talking about. She wasn’t aware of anyone who was offended by being called a Brit instead of an Englishman. The most interesting part of our conversation was about terrorism, especially relating to the Olympics, and the difference in reactions to it between Americans and the British. Angelica did not seem worried at all about a potential terrorist attack in London as the summer games grow closer. She believes that if a bomb scare were to happen in the United States, people would freak out and go crazy. On the contrary, she said English people aren’t really bothered by it. They are just angry that it throws their daily routine off balance.

            All in all, our conversation ended up being a lot more about life than sports. Her friend Kyle was interviewing turned out to be part-Greek so it was very interesting to be surrounded by people of such different backgrounds. I feel like my interview would have been a tad bit more interesting if it had been an avid male fan of some sort but I’m glad I chose the person I did. We talked for over an hour, exchanged e-mails and will likely meet up sometime next week at a pub.