The most striking thing about England’s flags at a modern tournament is what flag is actually being flown.

In pubs, fan parks and stadium ends, England support is now marked overwhelmingly by the red cross of St George. It is painted on faces, hung from balconies, printed across bucket hats and carried in away ends from Miami to Wembley. For younger supporters, it can feel obvious. England is playing, so England’s flag is flown.

But it was not always so obvious.

Look back at the images from 1966 – the last time England tasted World Cup glory – and the stands tell a different story. Wembley was not a sea of St George’s crosses. It was full of Union Jacks. In a long essay on the England team and English identity, The Guardian noted that in 1966 the tournament’s iconography was British rather than narrowly English: World Cup Willie wore a Union Jack waistcoat, publicity material used the Union Jack heavily, and in the Wembley crowd the Union Jack outnumbered the St George’s Cross by about 20 to one. The same piece noted that when Geoff Hurst made it 3-2 in the final against West Germany, the crowd broke into “Rule, Britannia!”

That detail matters because flags are never only a decoration. They show how a country thinks about itself at a particular moment.

In 1966, England’s football victory was often framed through Britain’s postwar memory. The final was against West Germany, only 21 years after the end of the Second World War. The Guardian’s account described the win as being widely viewed through that wartime prism, while The Times, looking back this week at what ordinary Britons were doing on the day of the final, described more than 30 million people watching the match and celebrations spilling into streets, pubs and national memory.

That did not mean Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland experienced England’s win as their own. The Guardian quoted Denis Law, Scotland’s great forward, remembering England’s 1966 triumph as “the blackest day of my life.” But in England itself, the symbolism of the day was still largely British. The Union Jack made sense in a culture where the memory of shared wartime effort remained close and where Englishness was often folded into Britishness without much public distinction.

By the 1990s, that settlement had begun to change.

Euro 96 was the turning point. England hosted the European Championship 30 years after the World Cup win, and the tournament sold itself with the language of return. UEFA’s slogan was “Football Comes Home,” a phrase that drew on England’s claim as the birthplace of the modern game. The Lightning Seeds, David Baddiel and Frank Skinner turned it into “Three Lions,” the song that became the emotional soundtrack of the tournament and has followed England ever since.