Supporting the English is a subject that I have also written on from time to time, and it always generates a huge reaction. This mainly comes from barstool Republicans, the Celtic-supporting thickos who gather in pubs around the country of a Saturday to shout IRA slogans at the television, or from GAAobsessed neanderthals suffering from the kind of post traumatic stress disorder that 800 years of oppression by the Brits can cause on a fellow.

Most of their arguments are easily dismissed, but one of them always carries a certain weight.

It is to do with the conduct of the English media which, over the course of a World Cup campaign, is usually so ridiculous, so selfobsessed and so mired in a 'Little Englander' mentality that, as a thinking, rational human being, you are almost duty bound to hope that their team do badly.

It doesn't seem to make any difference which section of the English media you go to, and the tabloids, which often get a hard time for the moronic nature of their patriotism, are by no means the worst offenders.

On 10 June, the day of England's first game in this year's tournament, RTE's expert panel (which has been so brilliant in its response to the World Cup's lows and many highs) milked minutes of fun from a Daily Telegraph editorial entitled 'On balance, God probably is English'. In the light of the laboured, joyless tedium that England's 'Golden Generation' passed off as football in the weeks after this astounding claim, some of it is worth repeating.

"Truly there are days when, as the poet Browning says, God is in his heaven and all is right with the world", waxed the writer. "Today is such a day: a cloudless June sky, the oxen reposed in the shade of the mighty British oak, the reek rising from a million barbecues, and England beginning its World Cup endeavourf Football is only one of the many innovations we have given the world: rubber bands, spinning jennies, penicillin, cat's eyes, the internet. We are a bold, spirited adventurous people."

If this kind of thing was an isolated incident, you could probably chuckle and move on. But this kind of thing is par for the course.

When England was still involved in this World Cup, English pundits such as the clownish Ian Wright and the tedious Alan Shearer told us how exciting the whole thing was, how full of great teams and players, how full of opportunities it was for England to make history.

As soon as England had been knocked out, these same pundits suddenly turned on the competition. The great teams were gone, the great players were few. What an opportunity England had missed to make history.

Delusion is the great disease of English football, of the English nation indeed, which makes the game its national sport and convinces itself that God wears three lions on his shirt. Although it was mildly moving to see David Beckham, John Terry, Rio Ferdinand and other familiar figures reduced to genuine tears of sadness in the wake of their World Cup exit, too much sympathy would have been misplaced because of the level of delusion that went into producing those tears.

Somewhere between inventing the spinning jenny and the internet (and you could write a whole column about that claim), the English have convinced themselves of their greatness, of their entitlement to success, of their natural talents, a conviction that seems to survive any amount of disappointment, any amount of evidence to the contrary. In those circumstances, English football is so out of touch with reality that it becomes impossible to empathise with its players and fans. And so, angry readers tell myself and Shane Coleman that we should cheer against it, that we should despise the very soul of it.

If such national self-delusion was a uniquely English trait, perhaps I might agree with those people and take on some of their suggestions.

But of course it isn't. Soccer is a wondrous invention (for which, I suppose, we should give the English credit, whatever about the competing claims of the Chinese), but it does, in times like these, have the capacity to lobotomise entire nations.

Have we already forgotten the demonisation of Eamon Dunphy in 1990 for suggesting what was obvious to anybody with two eyes and a feel for the game, that the football played by the Irish team at the World Cup in Italy was ugly beyond belief, much worse than anything the English produced over the last month?

What are we to make of the soccer haters who try to persuade us that the kind of cheating which has occasionally marred this World Cup could never happen in the good, honest GAA where men are men and dishonesty is a rarity?

Should we just leave them to salt the chips on their shoulders or remind them that on the day after Wayne Rooney was sent off for walking on an opponent's testicles, Wexford footballer Mattie Forde went unpunished despite stamping on an opponent's head in full view of several match officials and a large crowd of spectators?

Rooney will be punished by being banned for several games while Forde, because the GAA is such a dozily-run organisation, was allowed to play in another important match yesterday.

My point is that no nation is without its blind spots when it comes to its favourite sports, which tend to make fools of us all at some point. Because Ireland is not in the World Cup this time around, we may have forgotten that we are as prone to missing the point as anybody else. Delusion is not a specifically English disease, any more than God is an English deity.