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Go anywhere in Europe and even further afield and it's the same old story. You're English, so you must be a football hooligan. "You have good players, but the fans are a disgrace," they tell you in a bar in Barcelona. "The English they are animals," you are informed by the normally mild-mannered Greek waiter as he pours your tenth beer in the open-air bar beside the pool in Corfu. "You guys once had a reputation for fair play - now it's for fighting," offers a laid-back arty type in a street cafe in Paris.

Well, we were also once known as the polite gentlemen of the world. I'm going to blow that out of the water by telling Johnny Foreigner that the insults directed at our football fans are a load of tosh. I don't care if you think I'm rude. Look in the mirror. The truth hurts. Don't blame us for your own shortcomings. England is still a fine country with an unparalleled sense of fair play and common decency. You could learn so much from the way we lead our lives. But instead, so many of you have an enormous chip on your shoulder. Your feelings of inadequacies spur you on to lash out at the English because of an unfair perception that we are arrogant. So we are there to be knocked down.
Going back twenty or thirty years, there was a huge problem in football - and the English game was no different than other countries in Europe. Organized gangs looked forward to their Saturday afternoon kick around - trouble was it was rival fans they were kicking around like some imaginary football. Those of us who were around in the 1970s will always remember the image of a fan with a dart sticking out of his nose, just inches from his eye. We can never forget or condone what happened at Heysel or Sheffield. But foreign powers, UEFA and the press were quick to condemn the English without looking at the wider problem. Ban English teams from European competition for a few years and don't mention violence in the games played by the rest of Europe. Yes, there have been plenty of examples of disgraceful behavior perpetrated by English followers of the beautiful game, which risked turning it into something uglier than that intended by the founding fathers. Our Football Association and the Government quite rightly hammered into the violent English idiots. But never once did anyone point a finger at anyone other than the English. Blame the good old Rosbifs, lay into the 'Hijos be la Grand Britania'. It was all our fault. But was it?
I remember a game in Belgium when English supporters

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