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[Monty92]

Part of the 'charm', if one might use that word, of international football is precisely that it does, or should, allow the tribal rivalries to dissolve for a short while and for fans of the game to be united behind a team which is local to all of them.

Perhaps deep down we tire of the compulsory hatred for people who follow a team with a different colour shirt from another part of town. I met a bloke at the cricket last week - a fellow Middlesex fan watching them play the Surrey rivals - who was Spurs, and as he said: "It's ok - it's the summer".

The other thing is that World Cups are a chance for non-football fans to experience, and maybe enjoy, the ups and downs of football.

I admit to having my doubts about the Spurs component of this team, but eventually decided it was actually preferable to the collection of supposedly word-class thundercùnts of previous years who achieved rather less than this group of more modest abillity.

One way of measuring 'passion' is how hard it hurts to lose and long it hurts for. It hurt quite a bit last night, but not much, if any today. So I care a lot less than the two days of hurt I expect when Arsenal go out of something, which I would expect, but others might feel differently.

What is notable is that the people who hate England the most here are perhaps the three with the most proudly and robustly held right wing views, with a strong sideline in misanthropy. Interesting, that, should they ever question anyone's patriotism.

For me, Clive, it's simply about intellectual integrity and consistency.

I'd compare it to people like Jorge who quite clearly want Brexit to end badly because it will validate their own political ideology. That's obviously pretty contemptible, but it's at least loyal to his driving motivation (to be proven right). The real crime is the lack of intellectual integrity he shows by denying that this is his true, guiding motive.

Now, you could say I am similarly contemptible for wanting the country of my birth to lose a football game because I don't like some of the players. But I'm at least being consistent to my true, guiding motive (to see players I hate lose). And the only negative consequence is that England lose a football game.

I'd have thought that would be forgivable, if not understandable to those less bothered by such trifling matters as intellectual consistency and integrity