England is now so bad that many Scots will root for it

“I’ll tell you something that really annoys the arse off me,” shouted the bearded nationalist playwright character McGlashan in a 1990 skit on the Scottish sketch comedy show Absolutely. “Why do England always get an easy World Cup draw? ‘And now Scotland’s group: Scotland, Brazil, Argentina, Italy, West Germany, Uruguay. And now England’s group: England, Lapland, Melchester Rovers, me and my mum!’ ”

Nothing about that joke would work a quarter century on. Scotland have failed to qualify for the last four World Cups, and the anglophobia that the show made light of through McGlashan seems almost as archaic as the idea of Scotland fielding a national side strong enough to make it to football’s biggest stage. 

Just months away from a referendum on Scottish independence -- and with support for the “Yes” campaign on the rise -- it might seem odd that more Scots than ever will be rooting for England at this World Cup, after years of proudly backing “A.B.E.” (anyone but England). At a moment when the argument for ending 300 years of union with England is gaining traction, why would so many Scots choose to affirm a British identity in a way they have traditionally refused to do?

There are a number of plausible explanations. The game in Scotland, the country where the very concept of passing football was invented by Queens Park in the 1860s, is in terminal decline, and it could be that to many the prospect of carrying on a serious rivalry with England is simply a hopeless proposition. 

The kind of rash optimism with which Scots used to approach World Cups has given way to a permanent sense of defeat. In 1978, Scotland’s manager Ally McLeod was asked by a journalist as he boarded the flight to Argentina what he planned to do after the World Cup. “Retain it,” came the reply. 

Before that tournament another comedian, Andy Cameron, scored a hit with a song that perfectly illustrated how Scottish success was to be measured against, and sweetened by, English failure. 

We're on the march wi' Ally's Army,
We're going tae the Argentine,
And we'll really shake them up,
When we win the World Cup,
'Cos Scotland is the greatest football team.
We're representing Britain,
And we're gaunny do or die,
England cannae dae it,
'Cos they didnae qualify!

The nation forgot that Cameron was a comedian, and took him at his word. The 3-1 defeat to Peru in that tournament was a national trauma that may be ranked with the disastrous 1690s Darien Scheme to set up a trading colony in Panama, which left the country bankrupt.

Still, as Scottish antipathy towards the English team fades, the “A.B.E.” tradition has by no means disappeared. It continues to offer Scots a different way of watching the World Cup, a different angle on the media narratives through which England seeks to position itself in the world through its endlessly frustrating football team. Like us, the English must learn how to negotiate our increasing marginality in world affairs, and there are lessons to be learned for Scots watching the English team this summer.

This week David Cameron claimed that “fair play” was one of the core “British values” that all children should be taught in school. In recent tournaments, the English media has consistently fixated on the chicanery of “foreigners” as the excuse for English failings. English pundits fondly recite a catalogue of skullduggery wrought against the apparently “fair” English team: Maradona’s “hand of God” goal in 1986; Cristiano Ronaldo’s winking in 2006 after helping have his Manchester United teammate Wayne Rooney sent off; the performance of referee Urs Meier at Euro 2004, which saw him receive death threats and over 16,000 abusive emails from English fans.

“A.B.E.” Scots have an altogether different archive through which we remember England’s adventures in world football. We recall Michael Owen’s dive against the Argentines in 2002, and Ronaldinho’s ingenious lob that finally knocked them out (universally dismissed in England as “a fluke”). We know Maradona cheated to score past Peter Shilton in 1986, but we can see that it was also a moment of unsurpassed audacity and guile. We remember the “fair play” of Peter Crouch in 2006, who scored a towering header against Trinidad and Tobago having first secured a firm grip of his Trinidadian marker’s dreadlocks, and hauled himself skywards.

To insist on hoping for England’s defeat can’t wholly be divorced from a bitter and bigoted history. But it also offers Scots one way of thinking outside of what Paul Gilroy calls our collective “postcolonial melancholia.” By sympathising with England’s opponents, we can begin to see Britain for what it now is: just another place in the world.

I wrote to my brother, an Edinburgh lawyer, for his take. “There is less rabidly anti-English sentiment this time round,” he told me. “Less to do with the referendum than the fact that England are shit and this time, in an historic departure, know they are. To that extent at least, Scotland fans may be able to empathize with the auld enemy more than before. That said, there will still be considerable rejoicing  when Pirlo curls in the inevitable  94th minute free kick in the early hours of Sunday morning.”