England are through to their second successive European Championship final and play Spain on Sunday evening. So who should Scots fan support? Here Mark Smith says he’ll be cheering on England while Adam Miller says it's Anyone But England for him

Don’t be angry with me. I know my knowledge of football is not great. I know it’s not my specialist subject. I know I’ve only ever done one sports-writing shift in my entire career and the editor never asked me back because I didn’t know what nutmegging was. But bear with me please, because I want to write about football today. In particular, I want to write about how me (Scottish) became an England football fan.

I realise you may have judged me already and concluded the only reason I’m cheering on England, and feel real pleasure at their success in the Euros, is precisely because I know nothing about the game. I know nothing, you’ll say, about the deeper cultural, social, historical, and national instincts of the people who’ve followed football all their lives. That’s why Scottish fans cheer on Scottish success and English failure because they know what it’s all about and they care.

To an extent, you’d be right. At school I was the boy who was put in goal and took ages to work out it wasn’t a compliment. I also didn’t have any of the inheritance others had: my dad was indifferent to football and never took me to a game. The only time I was in Pittodrie growing up in Aberdeen was to see the evangelist Billy Graham. So maybe I do get some of it after all: the worshipping, the prayers, the hope for life after death. Faith, football: same.

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But it’s only in the Euros that I’ve started to care about some of it and to feel it a bit. Ordinarily, the football wouldn’t be on the telly at all in my house but I’ve been looking after the godchildren recently and they’ve wanted to watch the football so we’ve watched the football. The first game we watched was England v Slovenia and because the kids are fans and can watch and interpret a game, I then slowly – reluctantly at first, then with genuine interest – started to pick it up.

Fortunately, the kids, and the friends we watch the game with, are not the kind who are desperate for England to lose and I suspect there are more fans like that than you think. I watched the England semi-final against the Netherlands in a pub in Glasgow and there were some guys from Bolton in for the night and they cheered on England with what some might say was reckless abandon in a Scottish bar. But the regulars were cool with it and many were happy to see England win, maybe because they get it: the passion the boys from Bolton feel is the passion Scots feel.

I also wonder how much of the anti-English stuff is a bit performative: in other words, Scottish fans say they want England to lose because they think other Scottish fans expect them to say that. One thing you regularly hear is that the English commentators are a nightmare and keep going on about 19 - - , but mostly they just want England to win and are pleased when they do, which is sort of the point isn’t it? How else should they be? And when you challenge Scotland fans on the subject, quite a few of them say they actually don’t mind the idea of England winning and (secretly) are pleased to see a good side do well.

(Image: Ollie Watkins)

Watching the games recently has also made me realise a little more the kind of connection fans feel for the game and to want it for myself a bit; it’s certainly not something to be ashamed of. There was a silly incident recently when Keir Starmer wore a plain white T-shirt while watching the Serbia game apparently because his aides warned him that wearing an England shirt would harm his support in Scotland. But how many Scottish voters would really think like that? And second, don’t we respect fans genuinely caring about their side, rather than slipping on a plain white T-shirt and being a bit shame-faced about it?

The passion – the sort where you don’t care what other people think – is also one of the points of it all and part of the reason why I’ve been feeling a connection to England and English fans as they’ve progressed through the competition.

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As I say, I didn’t get a football upbringing; I’m also pretty uptight on the whole, so to see people in the fan zones erupting when England scores and throwing their arms, and their beer, in the air and screaming and shouting and behaving with zero self-consciousness and pure happiness, it’s great to watch, and I feel good for them and I want them to win. I also worry about who’s going to clean up the beer but that’s the uptight non-fan in me kicking in again.

And so tomorrow, it’s pizza in Finnieston then back to watch the final with the god kids and we hope England win, we really do. Perhaps some of you will find that hard to stomach. And if England do triumph, perhaps some of you will find the news coverage insufferable and I suppose for lifelong football fans it’s understandable to an extent: this game is about who you’re opposed to as well as who you support isn’t it? Who you hate as well as who you love.

But let me try a thought experiment with you. Imagine you’re English (you can do it). Now imagine you’re an English football fan on the night they win. I promise you: once you give in, it’s not bad, because it’s exciting that they’re doing well and they have some amazing players and the trajectory from shaky/bad at the start of the competition to potentially winning the thing is irresistible. So don’t feel angry with me. Join me. You’ll feel better.