Scot supports England: Did hell freeze over?

"C'mon you Swedes ..."

From today’s BBC website ...

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A spat has erupted between rivals David Cameron and Gordon Brown over their seats at England's football World Cup clash with Sweden.

The Tory leader's aides said Mr Cameron was in the stands with the fans while Mr Brown was in a box as a guest of the German government.

A source close to the chancellor angrily denied the claim.

They branded Mr Cameron a "Johnny Come Lately" football fan who got a ticket from his "corporate friends".

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The news for me isn’t really this latest posturing from the New Labour future leader and the Conservatives current leader.

No. It’s one far more odd. You see Mr Brown is Scottish, and the Scots have a complicated relationship when it comes to England in the World Cup.

As a (Scottish) friend of the Crow’s once put it – “it’s not so much that we want to see Scotland win, as much as England lose”. You can read all about the history of this football rivalry here.

And indeed during the last World Cup, there was an uproar after a leading member of the Scottish National Party urged his fellow countrymen to forget the ancient rivalry and support England in the World Cup.

So can we really expect in the light of this deep-rooted animosity that Mr Brown was there and cheering on the English side over the Swedish one? Can you trust a politician? Does a leopard change its spots?

In a darker turn to this there was this story, it seems several people were attacked in Scotland for wearing England football shirts. It seems in a multi-cultural country like England you can wear the football shirt of any country and not fear reprisals – not so in Scotland.

For posterity of course – the final result was a draw with England 2: Sweden 2 (more here). We’ve had a good run through this group winning every game so far, so this drawn result against Sweden was us finally facing our Waterloo …


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