EDD PAUL says other other countries, notably Germany, have overtaken us in the way they watch their football…

FOOTBALL, as us Brits love to remind everyone, was a British invention. Formed in the public schools, adopted by the great unwashed, moulded and transformed by decades of bickering, ideological nit-picking and debate -we’ve done a lot to form the game as it is today.Understandably, this means we feel a certain maternal pride over it; a selfishness and unwillingness to accept football, that great British invention, may not necessarily just be “ours”...