Today We Can Unite As A Land Of Hope... And Maybe Glory

There's a lot I hope doesn’t happen this afternoon at Wembley. Mainly, of course, I hope Germany doesn’t win.

- Stephen Pollard

But I also hope we don’t have to endure the usual chants about “Two World Wars and One World Cup”, along with the usual variations on that theme, that are always there when England plays Germany.

I don’t mind them because they are somehow “offensive”, as some would have it. Come on, they’re just a bit of harmless banter – they are meant lightheartedly and they’re part of the fun.

I’m a Spurs fan, and we used to say of our former player Steffen Freund, a combative midfielder who tried repeatedly to score but in over 100 appearances never managed to find the net, that it was typical of Spurs to have signed the only German who couldn’t shoot straight.

No, my objection to the Two World Wars and One World Cup theme is how pathetic it makes us seem.

GERMANY has won the World Cup four times and the Euros three times. We have just the one World Cup win in 1966. The idea that we have any basis on which to taunt German fans is preposterous.