So he strikes - and scores - like Thunderball! James Bond, football and the making of men

Football and/or James Bond are ready-made conversation starters among many men - things which you can more or less safely assume they will have an opinion about. But although these social lubricants overlap in significant ways, they present radically alternative versions of masculinity. Do we even realise how much we have been shaped by these cultural tentpoles? And why aren’t we all talking about this more?

'The English are not interested in heroes unless they are footballers or cricketers or jockeys…’

The only time football gets discussed across all of the Bond films and books is in Fleming’s From Russia, With Love, with the top brass of SMERSH and Russian ministers sneering at the English for their adoration of football (and sport in general).

Bond and football, then, may not seem like the most intimate of bedfellows.

In the obituary Fleming wrote for Bond in You Only Live Twice, he is described as athletic but solitary, which in turn influenced Charlie Higson in making his Young Bond a teenager who is physically fit (he loves running) but not much of a joiner-inner. Based on his use of the word ‘football’ alone, Fleming himself was not a fan. He most commonly uses it to bring to life things which are threatening, including a potentially deadly blowfish in Live And Let Die and, in the same novel, witchballs (like early disco balls) in Mr Big’s club. Various body parts of villains are described as resembling footballs, especially bulging eyes. Both Mr Big and Goldfinger have football-shaped heads. In Diamonds Are Forever, Bond is almost kicked to death by Sprang’s henchmen wearing (presumably American) football boots.

And yet, Bond and football often go hand in hand - at least in private. They may not be publicly ‘out’, but they’re more into each other than either would probably admit.

Potentially hostile territory

“Football has traditionally been an institution hostile toward sexual minorities.”

- Rory Macgrath, author of Inclusive Masculinities in Contemporary Football: Men in the Beautiful Game

While I hate to conform to gay stereotype, I never got into football. Perhaps it was because it was so conventionally masculine and I decided to - unconsciously - set myself apart from that. Maybe getting called a “poof” in PE lessons at school put me off, although many of my straight friends were called poofs as well and it didn’t discourage them, perhaps because they could just shrug it off. Or maybe James Bond supplied an alternative mental model of masculinity I found appealing. Either way, I spent most PE lessons making a decent show of being involved in the matches but secretly doing my utmost to avoid the ball. On the rare occasions I somehow scored goals - or saved them - it was more by fluke than design. I never had more than a bit of a clue about what I was really doing.

This is surprising really as football - like James Bond - is not all that complicated. Although TV pundits might dress it up as being like rocket science, and the players themselves are very skilled, a football match is very predictable: just like a James Bond film! It’s rare that you don’t know what you’re going to get. Sometimes a match might go into extra time (just like four of the five Craig films) and sometimes there may be an upset when you think it’s all about to be over (On Her Majesty’s Secret Service). But most of the time, a football match unfolds according to the rules. There will be dramatic ups and downs. In a dull match, there may be longueurs longer than the underwater scenes of Thunderball. When things are more frenetic, there may be quick flurries of action demanding replays to fully appreciate them, like pretty much any scene of Quantum of Solace. 

I don’t mean to belittle either football or James Bond. Simplicity is relative. James Bond or football might not be the answer to life, the universe and everything. But where’s the fun in an existential crisis? Even they wear a bit thin in the end. Compared with pondering into the void, football and Bond are well within many people’s comfort zones. That doesn’t preclude us from finding new angles on things we find familiar. It’s fun to find complexity in simple pleasures. This website is a testament to that! And I know many people feel the same about football. The comedian, novelist, presenter and co-writer of anthem Three Lions (Football’s Coming Home) David Baddiel argues that “football is always a metaphor”, reflecting what's going on at the time in society. Football is a microcosm of society, or a prism through which we can look at a vast and complicated world and try to make it make sense, no matter how distorted or myopic our vision might be. I would argue that the same is true for James Bond. It reflects society but also reveals things about us, the onlookers.

Just because I don’t ‘get’ football doesn’t mean I don’t respect the views of those who do. If anything, I’m more than a little jealous of football fans. In truth, I feel a bit left out of the conversation.

“With all due respect, M, sometimes I don't think you have the balls for this job.”

Whenever I meet someone who says they don’t like James Bond I have to take a moment. In this moment, I reconcile myself to knowing that there’s a good chance I am not going to be able to form a lasting and meaningful connection with this person. It’s sad, but it’s almost always true. It’s not as if I don’t try. In fact, I try so hard to put myself in their shoes. I think of all those times someone has brought football into conversation and I’ve shot down their enthusiasm by not even attempting to feign an interest.

Football is The Thing which it’s assumed most men are interested in, especially straight men. It doesn’t matter whether this is really the case or not. According to some studies, only half of all male Brits are into the ‘beautiful game’ and the numbers are decreasing. Fortunately for the clubs’ coffers, women’s attendance at matches played by men is increasing (they account for nearly a fifth of the total Premier League ticket sales) and women’s football is more popular than ever. No reliable figures exist (to my knowledge) for queer people’s attendance at football matches (LGBT people were only on the UK census for the first time in 2021!), but I suspect it has increased in line with the increased visibility of queer support, with most clubs having a dedicated LGBT spectators’ group and captains of national teams showing their support with rainbow armbands and laces. Of course, there have always been queer football fans, even if the only thing they could be loud and proud about was the team they were supporting on the pitch and not the one they were ‘playing for’ in their love lives.

Despite the perceived increase in interest from parts of society who were previously turned off by football, the reality is it’s still associated with straight men and they make up the majority of the audience - for now at least.

Perhaps we should not be surprised then when the denizens of traditionally male-dominated spheres expect everyone else (especially other men) to have an informed opinion about football. The New Statesman’s political correspondent Ailbhe Rea recently described football as the “social lubricant” that bonds her worlds of journalism and politics. If you can’t sustain a conversation about football it’s difficult to get ahead in these professional spheres. 

Fortunately, in my own sphere - education - it’s not such a massive impediment. Although it is a bit irksome when someone - a student or a colleague - asks me if I’m planning to watch “the game” in a way that implies I should know exactly which game they are referring to (the definite article ‘the’ is the giveaway).  And I don’t know why I should feel momentarily guilty when a student or group of students asks me “What team do you support?” as a way of starting a conversation and I have to concede that “I don’t really do football” and switch to another topic quickly: “So Year 8, what do you think about James Bond?”.

“Perhaps. But the advantage is, I don't have to think with them all the time.”

When I was of school age myself I tried to fit in with the other boys. I was six or seven (around the time I sensed something was different about me beyond not being interested in team sports) when I made a desperate grab for conformity by asking my dad to buy me a football kit because everyone I knew had one. I can vividly recall, even now, walking through the local market that sprang up every Saturday morning, arriving at the stall that had football kits on display and making my mind up almost instantaneously: I wanted the bright blue one. I wasn’t even aware it was the kit for Liverpool-based club Everton. This did not go down especially well with my dad, an ardent fan of Wolverhampton Wanderers with their black and gold livery. I still feel guilty whenever I hear Everton are playing against Wolves because I broke his black and gold heart. Sorry dad!

This was the beginning and end of my attempt to fit in by pretending to gain joy from football. I’ve been to a few football matches since and have sat with friends while watching games, but this was mostly for the social element. I even came out to a few of my friends during a 2010 World Cup fixture which I invited them around to my house to watch. The football match was the pretext for getting everyone together, like the end of an Agatha Christie novel where Poirot reveals the truth. Rather disappointingly, England lost the match (to Germany), which did rather put a dampener on any plans for a suburban Pride parade.

I’ve never even tried to fake my way through a conversation about football. I fear I’d be like a politician earnestly sweating their way through an interview in which they’ve declared a love for a new music artist and found themself unable to name a single one of their songs.

I could, if I needed to, throw in a few recycled opinions about the state of the game (too much money), the national team (naff at penalties) and VAR (terrible, right?). But I think this would be an insult to football fans, especially those who really know the game. It would be like someone faking their way through a conversation with me by limiting their insights to who they think is the best Bond and which they think is the best film (and possibly mixing it up with the other one featuring Jaws). In other words, they would bore me to tears.

I have no doubt that there are football fans who can tell you which country won every single World Cup, right back to 1930. Perhaps this is on a par with me being able to recite all of the Bond film titles in order of release (along with their years, directors and composers, if you must know). 

But this is entry level stuff, yes?

I don’t want to sound exclusionary here. Any conversation about Bond is a good conversation. And I imagine most football fans are very tolerant of ingenues like me attempting to get stuck in with their interlocutions, no matter how feeble my conversational contributions. I just think we need to be more upfront with people and not lazily settle for the first topic of conversation we erroneously assume both parties will find of equal interest. If you’re both not into it, move past it; there’s more for men to talk about than football; there’s more - dare I say it - to talk about than Bond. And for pity’s sake though, don’t fall back on talking about the weather.

Of course, we could always stick with Bond or football as conversation topics. But rather than merely trot out the same discussions, we could use them as starting points to dig a little deeper.

A licence to talk… and maybe more

Men are famously terrible at talking about - and showing - their feelings. But are they really? In 1997, the linguist Deborah Cameron published findings of research (The Myth of Mars and Venus) which used data to investigate whether popular claims such as ‘Men talk more about things and facts, whereas women talk more about people, relationships and feelings’ had any degree of truth. She concluded that men and women weren’t anywhere near as different as we assume.

My own experiences concur with this. The men I know DO talk about their feelings. The difference is, they usually do so by proxy. That is, they talk about something which it’s socially acceptable to have strong feelings about - like football or James Bond - rather than speak about issues directly.

Football is neutral territory which gives many men permission to get visibly passionate. It’s a safe space where not just talking about feelings but giving other men hugs and open-mouthed kisses is sanctioned. It’s as if the joy of your team scoring a goal gives you a licence to kiss, if you will. I know plenty of otherwise buttoned-up straight-identifying men who are emotional open books on a football terrace. And when they discuss their favourite players they do it in such an admiring way that, taken out of context, you would swear they were singing the praises of their (female) partners. Every ardent football supporter I know has at least one ‘man crush’ drawn from the ranks of their favourite team.

Similarly, Bond can provide a group of straight-identifying men with a platform to explore ‘women’s interests’, such as clothing, perfumes and being really particular about what you eat and drink. And boy do people get passionate when you come for their favourite Bond film and put it towards the bottom of their ranking! They may not go as far as kissing a fellow Bond fan when 007 performs a hair-breadth escape to the brassy strains of the Bond theme, but I daresay the idea may cross some minds in these joyful moments of emotion.

“Balls, Q?”

Although some people might still think that gender identity extends no further than the contents of our underwear, there’s a lot more to being a man than merely being in possession of a pair of testicles.

Whenever men share their feelings about football or James Bond they are developing their relationships with each other. They are - indirectly - exploring their identities as men. And these identities can, and often do, shift over time.

In a paper published the year I finished school (2000), Dr John Swain researched the role playground football played in shaping boys’ identities in British education. He observed that “football acts as a model for the boys, and they use the game as a way of constructing, negotiating, and performing their masculinity”. Swain concluded that football was a “major influence on hegemonic masculinities” (the idea that stereotypically male traits are idealised, to the exclusion of women and men who are more ‘feminine’). Nowadays, the term ‘toxic masculinity’ is in everyday language, although the term itself has been heard in academia since the 1980s. 

More recently, an academic specialising in homophobia in football Rory Magrath (not to be confused with Rory McGrath, the presenter and sometime football pundit), has extensively researched the changing relationship between masculinities (plural) and football and argued that there has been a cultural shift in the game, with it now being more inclusive of less stereotypical males than ever before. Perhaps this will influence more men’s behaviour in the coming decades. 

Social change happens too slowly for my liking. It can be sped up by opening up the conversation and speaking about social issues more directly. And men critiquing what it means to be a man is something we urgently need more of. Note: critique, not criticise. Some men feel threatened by any attempt to lift the lid on behaviours which are no longer deemed acceptable, particularly behaviours towards women. I don’t want to suggest we wipe the slate clean (some men really do need to take a long hard critical look at themselves) but relentless excoriation makes people defensive and gets us nowhere. We’re all victims of gender stereotyping to a greater or lesser degree. 

Although countless articles - both popular and academic - have played with the idea that ‘men want to be James Bond’, only a relatively small proportion have done more than scratch the surface (the clothes, the cars, etc). And while it’s hard to imagine any man wanting to live like James Bond in its totality (and somewhat worrying if it IS the case), few of us would deny he hasn’t shaped at least some of our personality traits or behaviours - in both good ways and bad ways.

For instance, I can credit the films’ Bond with my insouciant sense of humour and the novels’ Bond with my propensity for self-reflection. Both of these I consider to be good things in the right context. But insouciance can sometimes convert to flippancy. And self-reflection, left unchecked, can become indulgent navel-gazing. 

Bond is something that deserves nuanced debate, just like football - and masculinity as a whole. Millions of men have been made, in part, by Bond and football, two of our most significant cultural tentpoles. But what proportion of us are conscious of this? What proportion of us talk about this?

Football and James Bond are good conversation openers. They are social lubricants. So let’s keep the conversation going.