Strangely I seemed to be the one most upset in our family about the calamity that happened last night with the England world cup football team. Of course watching it we were all tense. After the disallowed goal son couldn't sit still and had to go and watch the game in the solitude of the kitchen. I was told to stop shouting at the telly. During the second half an eerie silence descended onto our TV room.
Husband later said, 'You know I'm not that upset. The Man United fans have always cared more about their team than England, and now I know how they feel.'
I felt cheated: I'd had great difficulty in engaging with the World Cup this year but finally after the last England group game I got hooked. (Perhaps due to that goal by the Spurs striker above) Of course I thoroughly enjoyed watching the wall to wall football all the time but I also wanted England to do well. With such good squad and manager, on paper, surely we should do well? Besides, I had no-one else to cheer: Finns had got nowhere near qualifying and even the Swedes failed to reach South Africa.
Jason Isaacs, otherwise known as Lucius Malfoy from Harry Potter when asked one BBC1's Breakfast Show about the football said, 'I'm supporting Spain, Liverpool-on-sea, anyway.'
So there we have it, if the English care more about the club football, and the players obviously do, how an earth can we expect the national team even want to do well?
Is English football the victim of its own success? We have world leading club football but cannot put together an English team worth its oranges at half time.
And if you didn't already know it, we all root for Spurs and cannot wait for the next season, especially as we hopefully will have a much shorter journey to watch the games at White Hart Lane.
