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jobs of the fathers of England players who played at the World Cups of 1998, 2002, and 2006. Boyle ignored jobs the fathers might have been handed after their sons’ rise to stardom. As much as possible, he tried to establish what the father did while the son was growing up. Using players’ autobiographies and newspaper profiles, he came up with the following list. It doesn’t include every player (asked, for instance, what Wayne Bridge’s dad did for a living, we throw up our hands in despair), but most are here. Another caveat: some of the dads on the list were absent while their boys were growing up. That said, here are their professions: Many of these job descriptions are imprecise. What exactly did Rob Lee’s dad do at the shipping company, for instance? Still, it’s possible to break down the list of thirty-four players into a few categories: Eighteen players, or more than half the total, were sons of skilled or unskilled W H Y E N G L A N D L O S E S A N D O T H E R S W I N
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    F I G U R E 2 . 1 Employment of World Cup fathers
    Player
    Father’s job
    Tony Adams
    Roofer
    Darren Anderton
    Ran moving company; later a taxi driver
    David Batty
    Sanitation worker
    David Beckham
    Heating engineer
    Sol Campbell
    Railway worker
    Jamie Carragher
    Pub landlord
    Ashley Cole
    None given, but in his autobiography describes “a grounded working-class upbringing in east London”
    Joe Cole
    Fruit and vegetable trader
    Peter Crouch
    Creative director at international advertising agency
    Stewart Downing
    Painter and decorator on oil rigs
    Kieron Dyer
    Manager of Caribbean social club
    Rio Ferdinand
    Tailor
    Robbie Fowler
    Laborer; later worked night shift at railway maintenance
    depot
    Steven Gerrard
    Laborer (bricklaying, paving, and so on)
    Emile Heskey
    Security worker at nightclub
    Paul Ince
    Railway worker
    David James
    Artist who runs gallery in Jamaica
    Jermaine Jenas
    Soccer coach in the United States
    Frank Lampard
    Soccer player
    Rob Lee
    “Involved in a shipping company”
    Graeme Le Saux
    Ran fruit and vegetable stall
    Steve McManaman Printer
    Paul Merson
    Coal worker
    Danny Mills
    Coach in Norwich City’s youth academy
    Michael Owen
    Soccer player
    Wayne Rooney
    Laborer, mainly on building sites; often unemployed
    Paul Scholes
    Gas-pipe fitter
    David Seaman
    Garage mechanic, later ran sandwich shop, then worked at
    steelworks
    Alan Shearer
    Sheet-metal worker
    Teddy Sheringham
    Policeman
    Gareth Southgate
    Worked for IBM
    John Terry
    Forklift-truck operator
    Darius Vassell
    Factory worker
    Theo Walcott
    Royal Air Force administrator; later joined services
    company working for British Gas

    20

    manual laborers: Vassell, Terry, Shearer, Seaman, Scholes, Rooney, Merson, McManaman, Ince, Heskey, Gerrard, Fowler, Adams, Batty, Beckham, Campbell, Ferdinand, and Downing. Ashley Cole with his
    “working-class upbringing” is probably best assigned to this category, too. Four players ( Jenas, Lampard, Mills, and Owen) had fathers who worked in soccer. Le Saux and Joe Cole were both sons of fruit and vegetable traders. Anderton’s dad ran a moving company, which seems to have failed, before becoming a cab driver. Sheringham’s father was a policeman. Carragher’s and Dyer’s dads ran a pub and a social club, respectively. That leaves only five players out of thirty-four—Crouch, James, Lee, Southgate, and Walcott—whose fathers seem to have worked in professions that required them to have had an education beyond the age of sixteen. If we define class by education, then only 15
    percent of England players of recent years had “middle-class” origins.
    The male population as a whole was much better educated. Of British men aged between thirty-five and fifty-four in 1996—the generation of most of these players’ fathers—a little more than half had qualifications above the most basic level, according to the British Household Panel Study.
    English soccer’s reliance on an overwhelmingly working-class talent pool