Thank goodness we were spared an England victory

Kenneth Wolstenholme’s iconic commentary; the Queen preening in the Wembley stand, wearing her Elsie Tanner hat; the now comically-dated footage of England’s toothless midfielder, Nobby Stiles, skipping across the pitch after the match, holding the Jules Rimet trophy aloft in one hand. All provoke a visceral, Pavlovian sense of revulsion in the mind of any self-respecting Scottish fan.

We commended Denis Law for playing golf on the day of the final against West Germany. We made up derogatory songs, questioning the sexuality of Jimmy Hill. There was even an Irn Bru advert, mocking the failure of English sports commentators, for decades afterwards, to get through a single sentence, in any context, without mentioning 1966.

While other footballing nations, like Germany and Argentina, are bad losers in that they find it difficult to tolerate even the idea of failure, England are bad winners.

When England win anything, particularly in football, the London-based media like to remind us about it ad infinitum and the Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish are caught in the crossfire.

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As a result, the prospect of England winning another major football competition has, for Scottish football fans like me, become a terrifying, enduring possibility like the prospect of catastrophic climate change or nuclear Armageddon.

Every two years, summer approaches with a morbid foreboding that this might be the year, when the clock is reset for another half-century of nauseating, perpetual self-congratulation.

While the current generation of commentators may have dialled down on the ’66 rhetoric, they continue to exhibit a heroic level of self-confidence that every tournament is England’s for the taking.

While the current England squad does contain some highly talented individuals, the sense of entitlement held by a nation that hasn’t won anything for almost 60 years can grate on the ears of Scots who have long since come to accept the immense limitations of our own national side.

This year, for me, has been different however because, while I am Scottish on my mother’s side, on my father’s side I am Spanish.

While my heritage has given me and my family countless reasons to celebrate footballing success over the past decade-and-a-half, for decades Spain, like Scotland, were perennial under-achievers.

While the 1970s and 80s was a time when Scotland could rightly claim to be, at least competitive with England, that has long since ceased to be the case.

In those days our national team always qualified for World Cup finals, we frequently bested the Auld Enemy, most memorably at the hallowed home of English football, and the most successful club sides south of the Border – Leeds, Derby County, Liverpool, Nottingham Forest, Ipswich Town and Manchester United – were all over-represented by talented Scots.

Since the early 1990s however, Scotland has been on a steady and seemingly irreversible decline, where qualifying for the finals of major tournaments is now seen as the pinnacle of success.

From the early 1960s, when Spain won its first European Championship, it mirrored Scotland’s pattern of promising much and under-delivering on the biggest stages.

In the 1980s Scotland was arguably a better and more talented side. I stood on the Hampden terraces in 1984 and watched in awe as Kenny Dalglish and co humbled the Spaniards 3-1 in a World Cup qualifier.

I watched Spain lose to England at Euro 96 in a packed central London pub, genuinely fearing for my safety if my Spanish heritage was somehow detected by England fans. In those days, Spain were confirmed underdogs and were seen to have over-achieved in taking the match to penalties.

Since then, however, while Scotland has gone into decline, Spain has experienced a footballing revolution, becoming arguably the world’s most successful national side, winning a World Cup and three Euros.

It has done so by championing a long-term, grass roots programme of football development that prioritises skill, technical ability and teamwork.

The so-called “tika-taka” style of intricate passing movements, combined with bursts of explosive pace – championed by Johan Cruyff at Barcelona and adopted by the national side for its successful World Cup campaign in 2010 – is not easy to implement, because it requires years of practice and dedication and players with a high level of technical ability.

While England arrive at the finals of every tournament as though victory has been pre-ordained, the approach of Spanish fans and media is refreshingly more pragmatic.

Despite the peerless success of the national side in recent years, it was generally agreed that its young but promising squad, which lacked experience and had few established stars, would do well to reach the quarter-finals of this year’s Euros.

Even after beating Croatia, Italy, Germany and France en route to the final, there was no great sense of expectation in Spain that it would go on to win the tournament.

In contrast, England’s shaky passage through a series of unconvincing performances against Slovakia, Switzerland and a below-par Holland was seen as ideal preparation for its ultimate and inevitable victory.

One commentator predicted that England’s prayers would finally be answered, as though even God has three lions on his smock.

England's 1966 World Cup win, as if we needed reminding (Image: PA)

As if I needed reminding of why I don’t support England, one of the last things I saw before the match was a social media reel of a Spaniard, dressed in his nation’s red strip, walking past a bar packed with England fans in Berlin, who serenaded him to a loud chorus of “you can shove your f***ing tapas up your arse”.

I’m thankful that, this year, I was able to glory in victory for my team - rather than defeat for England - and in this I felt a warm sense of camaraderie, as though every Scot had become Spanish for a day.

Present and future generations who have no direct memory of the interminable propagandising of Messrs Hill, Motson, Davies et al need to be constantly cautioned not to forget the impact of England’s 1966 World Cup win.

Like any historical tragedy, it may be painful to remember, but it is necessary to do so to ensure we don’t become complacent. We must always work hard, and encourage others to work hard, to ensure that it can never happen again.