England are through to their second successive European Championship final and play Spain on Sunday evening. So who should Scots fan support? Here Mark Smith says he’ll be cheering on England while Adam Miller says its Anyone But England for him
Don’t be angry with me. I know my knowledge of football is not great. I know it’s not my specialist subject. I know I’ve only ever done one sports-writing shift in my entire career and the editor never asked me back because I didn’t know what nutmegging was. But bear with me please, because I want to write about football today. In particular, I want to write about how me (Scottish) became an England football fan.
I realise you may have judged me already and concluded the only reason I’m cheering on England, and feel real pleasure at their success in the Euros, is precisely because I know nothing about the game. I know nothing, you’ll say, about the deeper cultural, social, historical, and national instincts of the people who’ve followed football all their lives. That’s why Scottish fans cheer on Scottish success and English failure because they know what it’s all about and they care.
To an extent, you’d be right. At school I was the boy who was put in goal and took ages to work out it wasn’t a compliment. I also didn’t have any of the inheritance others had: my dad was indifferent to football and never took me to a game.........