WORLD CUP ‘94: 9 Days and Counting : The Sun Has Set : The British Soccer Empire Is No More, and Its Fans Aren’t Happy About It

Summer will be in its dawning glory, and yet a monthlong fog is forecast to descend upon England--all of Great Britain, actually, but most noticeably in England--with next week’s kickoff of the World Cup.

The 31-day, 52-game tournament will determine the champion of their game, soccer. But they--England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland--are not playing in it, all having failed to qualify among the 24 finalists that are coming to America.

As Pete Davies, an author of Welsh and English parentage, said this week from his home in Wales, “We have our most unpopular government since World War II, a royal family littered with a bunch of adulterous mediocrities, and we can’t play bloody football, either.”

A great many unflattering things have been uttered about British footballers since they invented the sport--or at least established formal rules for it--in the middle of the 19th Century, but seldom has it been said before that their national teams cannot play the game.

Even when they chose not to enter the first three world championships, they were considered by virtually everyone to be so dominant that they should remain separate instead of forming one super team under the Union Jack. And although it quickly became apparent when they rejoined the international fold in 1950 that several other countries had at least caught up to them, they have been represented in each World Cup since by at least one team. Until now.

How are they taking it?

“They reject the World Cup,” said John Harkes, a midfielder for the U.S. team who recently arrived from Derby County, where he plays in England’s first division. “They’re very bad losers.”

Said Davies: “As far as the British soccer fan is concerned, I’m afraid the attitude is, ‘Oh, well, we didn’t qualify for it, so it’s not happening.’ ” Davies knows better; his most-recent book is a soccer primer for American audiences entitled, “Twenty-Two Foreigners in Funny Shorts.”

That attitude, he said, is particularly pervasive among the English, who consider themselves at the center of all things British, even failure.

“They are absolutely certain, without any justification at all, that England has the divine right to be in the World Cup,” he said. “This is an appalling ignominy for them.”

It is not the first time they have suffered it. The English did not qualify in 1974 and ’78 and probably would not have advanced in ’82 if the field had not been expanded from 16 to 24 teams. But it hurts more now because of the perception that almost no one misses them.

That is due only in small part to their performance on the field. Even though they are one of only six nations ever to win a World Cup--that was in 1966--and advanced to the semifinals as recently as four years ago, they no longer are mentioned in the same breath with Argentina, Brazil, Italy and Germany, but with lesser powers such as Belgium and Spain.

In their World Cup qualifying group last year, they finished not only behind the Netherlands, a perpetual contender, but behind Norway.

Norway!

“England has become a middle ranking nation,” Davies said.

Still, the English would be more than welcome in the United States, where they retain an aura borne in tradition, as long as they agreed to leave that small but destructive minority of their fans known as hooligans at home. Searching for the silver lining in their failure to qualify, even some English say that at least their consciousness will not be invaded this summer by the lager louts.

“There won’t be any newspapers reporting about how our hooligans have been shot up by the American police,” said Nick Hornby, an author from London who wrote “Fever Pitch,” a book about the life of an incurable English soccer fan.

That also is a relief to insiders at the British Embassy in Washington, although they cannot admit it publicly for fear of a future posting to Sri Lanka. But World Cup organizers in the United States were unequivocally grateful for England’s bad fortune. They believe it will save them a significant amount of money in security costs.

On these shores, the only fans who seem to be sad that the British are not coming are the British who live here, especially pub owners.

Tony Moogan of Liverpool bought the Cock ‘n Bull in Santa Monica two months before the 1990 World Cup and did his best business ever when England forged through to the semifinals as expatriates gathered in front of his big-screen television to watch the games. He does not expect a similar bonanza this summer.

Neither does Patrick Fairley, a Scotsman from Glasgow who once played guitar in a rock band, Marmalade, and now owns Scotland Yard in Canoga Park. The only businesses that will suffer more than pubs from the absence of the Brits, he said, are drug stores.

“The pharmacists would have made a killing in sunburn cream,” he said. “The English who come here are pink, and the Scots have to sit in the sun for a couple of days to get pink. They’re blue.”

Fairley used his sense of humor to financial advantage by selling T-shirts pronouncing that England’s 1994 USA Tour has been canceled.

But for Moogan, Fairley and other pub owners comes an encouraging word from Hornby, who believes that British fans, even the English, will give in to the allure of the World Cup once it begins.

“The football culture is so big among us that the idea of live games on television is irresistible,” he said.

And he believes that they will even have a team to call their own.

“The Irish coach, who is an Englishman, is a genius at finding unlikely Irishmen, players from England or Scotland who are eligible to play for Ireland because they have Irish grandmothers,” Hornby said of Jack Charlton. “So we’re all doing what the Irish football coach does, trying to find some traces of Irish blood.”

As for those whose family tree branches do not extend into Eire, enthusiasm already is building for the 1996 European Championships, which will be played in England.

The English, in particular, are optimistic because they have identified the source of their malady, Coach Graham Taylor, and sacked him.

“He was an inept manager who picked the wrong players and played them in dim-witted formations,” Davies said.

Davies is convinced that the new coach, Terry Venables, is the right man, a belief that was reinforced by a recent 5-0 thrashing of World Cup qualifier Greece.

This theme of the Englishman as bloodied but unbowed, of course, is nothing new. Perhaps it is apocryphal, but the story is often told of the German who, after a post-World War II soccer victory by Germany over England, boasted to an English acquaintance, “Well, I see that we beat you at your national game.”

“Yes,” the Englishman replied, “and twice we have beaten you at yours.”