Source: Politics<\/p>\n
While Boston and Dallas have been taken over by marauding Scotland and England fans, Washington, D.C., this week welcomed a (slightly) more sedate British crowd at Duke\u2019s Grocery, a trendy restaurant and bar in Washington\u2019s West End neighborhood.<\/p>\n
Call it the U.K.\u2019s diplomatic mullet: Business in the front; party in the back.<\/p>\n
More than a hundred England fans crowded some 10 television sets inside the bar on Wednesday, invited by the U.K. embassy to mark their team\u2019s first game of the World Cup against Croatia.<\/p>\n
Flags for every participant hung down from the ceiling. An old British telephone box sat in the corner, chock full of cups and salt shakers. There was also a cardboard cutout of Prince William and Kate at their wedding tucked underneath a Pride flag just by the front door.<\/p>\n
Despite a critical election in Makerfield on Thursday, which is set to propel Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham toward a leadership challenge to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, sport was top of mind at the party.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the best bit about it,\u201d said Frances Sterling, head of strategic communications and public diplomacy at the British Embassy in Washington. \u201cThis afternoon, there\u2019s been no politics.\u201d<\/p>\n
The event pulled in Premier League fans<\/a> from many of England\u2019s largest clubs, encompassing World Bank staffers and embassy employees, English and Americans. They drank, celebrated heartily when England scored and chanted \u201cwanker\u201d in unison when calls went against them on the field.<\/p>\n A sign just off the projection set at the center of the bar read, \u201cGreat sport brings people together.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou know, you get in a stand, and you watch a football game, and everybody\u2019s a friend,\u201d Sterling said. \u201cEverybody is there for one thing, and you go do the highs and lows of that team, and you feel like you live it, and, for everyone in the U.K. it\u2019s that sense of national pride that this is their game, but it\u2019s played all over the world.\u201d<\/p>\n Duke\u2019s will have hosted three games in tandem with the U.K. embassy throughout round robin play \u2014 two for England and just one for Scotland.<\/p>\n Sterling said that\u2019s because the Scottish fans have decamped to Boston, where they\u2019re drinking the city dry<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe U.K. consulate there is absolutely overrun,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd so we were like, you know what? Scotland is doing great in Boston, so we\u2019ll do one, but we know they\u2019re all there.\u201d<\/p>\n