Fitba Hell

England fans must hate themselves. It’s hard to conclude otherwise when you see the venom directed at their own any time the national team fails to win. Expectation builds up to a frenzy before tournaments, and when failure inevitably occurs there’s a huge backlash: listen to the Radio 5 or TalkSport phone-ins and hear the strangely exultant hatred that gets directed at the hapless players. The fans revel in the pre-tournament hype and they revel in crushing failure; it’s strangely masochistic.

The vitriol heaped upon David Beckham during radio phone-ins would make you think he was the chief executive of HBOS or Bradford and Bingley, if you’d somehow never heard of him. Beckham, having won more England caps than any other outfield player apart from Bobby Moore, suffers from a cumulative effect. He’s been around for longer than any other England player and is therefore held responsible for more failures than any of his colleagues.

Yet he won’t retire from international football. Like the fans, he keeps coming back for more, in the hope that it’ll one day lead to glory: he is the embodiment of the England fans biennially renewed optimism. When they pour their hate out on him as it all ends in tears again, they’re tipping it all over themselves at the same time.

Well done Walter Smith. Rangers chairman David Murray has been laying into the Rangers bigots for a while now, but I can’t recall Smith ever expressing his disdain for the sectarian “bile” that refuses to dislodge itself from the club so bluntly as he did a couple of days ago. Having the Rangers manager and chairman join forces in this way might just be a watershed at Ibrox, in the same way the signing of high-profile Catholic players by Graeme Souness was 20 years ago.

They’ve still got a long way to go, though. The media likes to portray the Old Firm bigots as knuckle-draggers, almost a different species from their ordinary, decent supporters. Yet as I write on the train this morning, there’s a Northern Irish guy a few yards away from me who’s relaying what he describes as Smith’s “disgraceful comments” to a fellow Rangers supporter. Apparently, Smith is to be respected for what he’s done for Rangers in the past, but this attack of Rangers traditions is out of line and it’s time for him to go. This is no Buckfast-swilling neanderthal: he’s dressed in a pin-striped suit, has some fancy-looking cufflinks, and is reading the Daily Telegraph; we’re on the way to Edinburgh and everything about him screams respectable civil servant.

Sectarianism is not restricted to fringe elements at Rangers – it’s part of the fabric of the club. Which makes Smith’s stance even braver.

Chris Iwelumo has reacted with incredible good grace to the humiliation of that miss against Norway last week. He's had to field constant questions about an incident that's made him an object of derision on YouTube, and done so patiently, openly and without griping about being a figure of fun.

Meanwhile, Kris Boyd has thrown a strop and gone off to pet his lip in a corner because he didn't get a game last week.

Iwelumo's humiliation was far greater than Boyd's, and the reaction of both reveals a little about what type of men they are. I don't care about Boyd's impressive career scoring record or that Iwelumo's a journeyman who got a game because of a handful of impressive performances in England's second tier. Give me Iwelumo over Boyd in a Scotland jersey any day.

Strathclyde Police praised Scotland fans for their good behaviour before and after the World Cup qualifier against Norway last weekend. Isn't this a bit odd when you think about it? Isn't it the sort of thing teachers say about their pupils when they haven't stuck chewing gum on the museum's prize exhibits or mooned passing motorists?