It's best to follow the action from the „wrong” side of the world

„Personally, I liked the fans who, once England were out, simply decided to follow another country. I heard one guy on Radio 5 Live who had decided to go with Uruguay. He seemed confused as to why he had thrown his lot in with this tiny country. One strand of thought was his confession that he was to marry two uruguayan girls should they reach the final. Presumably, this curious arrangement was made after he started to follow them.

This therefore still didn't explain his initial attraction to them. I'm a well-travelled man and racked my brain to think of what little I knew of Uruguay. The best I could do was that they are cannibals. The rugby team that crashed in the Andes and started to eat each other in the book/film Alive were from there. I'm sure that this is unfair on uruguayans and that their national dish is not a cold meat platter but I struggle to know much more. The capital is Montevideo which, according to my nine-year-old daughter, means: »I see mountains.« I'm not sure if this is a reference to the eating fellow passengers incident or simply a coincidence. Oh yes, Homer Simpson once famously pointed to a map of the world and announced with some glee that there was a country called »U R GAY«.

In the end my decision on who to support once England were out came down to practicalities. I knew that I would have to leave my sofa for work purposes. I was going to be in New York for the final and it was going to be difficult to find a plethora of uruguayan or dutch bars. So I went with Spain (Germany was obviously not an option). This paid off as the Big Apple is rammed with spanish bars revelling in this european hispanic football success. Having dark hair and brown eyes I simply »became« spanish and forgot about english sporting disasters for a while.”