Now that the World Cup is over, I can make a confession. I was rooting against England.

It didn't start that way - unlike Jack McConnell, I harbor no historically ingrained bitterness against the English. In fact, I was generally inclined to cheer for them, seeing as how I am living in England and entertained no grand expectations for my own country's squad. I even found myself developing a certain fondness for Becks, Rio, Crouchy & co.

Then I encountered English fans.

A group of us Americans had huddled up in our college's TV room to watch the opening match versus the Czech Republic (yes, a good many of us Yanks actually DO watch football).

It was a disastrous game our team looking listless and lost while losing 3-0. But to add insult to injury a posse of English fans had infiltrated our ranks, not for the sake of watching the match, but purely to mock the American team. Every time our boys missed a shot, these men would laugh condescendingly. They shouted in outrage whenever the Americans committed a foul, and derided the referee when a foul was called on the Czechs.

Well, by the end of the match, I was irritated. It's one thing to take the mick in a good-natured way, but I would never dream of coming into a room of foreigners and openly sneering at their team, and by extension their home country, while they were trying to cheer them to victory. And I can't imagine that sort of behaviour would have taken place if the team and fans in question had been from, say, Japan or Ghana (France maybe). But for some reason, this sort of churlish behaviour is considered totally acceptable when its target is the US.

Yes, England may be better at us in football but what about all the other sports in existence? And at least in the States, in the sports we're good at, we win championships, whereas England can't even do that.

But this reaction, I realized, would hardly earn me sympathy points, not to mention that it would confirm the unfortunate stereotype of American arrogance.

So I swallowed my words and turned to a more philosophical approach.

It's not that I don't understand the appeal of rooting for the underdog. And in many senses, Big Bad America is the quintessential Goliath. But not in football! If you really wanted to cheer for an underdog in the US versus Czech Republic match, the States is the clear choice. We certainly weren't favoured to win. And we hardly have a glorious football past to harken back to.

In the larger scheme of things, the joy of football, why it is the joga bonita, is how its brings people together from all over the world.

When I watched the Argentina versus Mexico game, I felt that joy. There was singing, dancing it was a veritable festival. Sure, there was rivalry, but it didn't obscure the larger fact that we were all here to cheer on our respective teams and enjoy watching the skill and grace of these practitioners of the beautiful game.

Watching games with English fans, I never felt that joy. There were expletives, aggression, and whining about the refs. From then on, it was "Allez les Bleus!