Do Scottish football fans really want to see England fail in Russia?

It doesn't even matter whether they win, lose or draw against Belgium tonight – in fact, it may actually be better if Kane doesn't grab another hat-trick, all that matters is they are through to the next round and then, well... 

England are going to win the World Cup, Harry Kane will be knighted, Raheem Sterling’s cherubic face will adorn all new currency, and the entire nation will spontaneously break out into a Jesse Lingard-inspired hype dance that doesn’t end until the last person drops to the floor in ecstasy and exhaustion. 

Well, perhaps not the whole nation. Because, of course, this sceptred isle, Great Britain, is not just England, is it?

There is of course the other home nations who didn't make it through to Russia, but they'd want their neighbours to do well right? RIGHT?

Well in a bid to have this question answered – from at least Scotland's perspective – on the day that England played Panama, I decided to burst out of my metropolitan Manchester bubble and travelled north of the wall to, well, the metropolitan bubble of Glasgow – to get a feel for the competition. 

Why the Panama game? Well with this match likely to see the three lions progress to the next round, I came to the conclusion that the Scottish support (or lack there of) for this game would presumably set the tone for the rest of England's World Cup campaign. So, do the ‘weegies’ (and Scots on the whole), want to see England do well at the World Cup? Do they want to see them fail? Do they care either way? 

The answer is, well, sort of all of those things, depending on who you ask. Which, I suppose, makes sense. 

I arrived expecting to see fans in Panama shirts on every corner. Not so. We did spot one chap with a Panama hat, but it turned out he was just wearing it for practical (as well as sartorial) reasons – it was a scorcher and the man had very fair skin. Best to keep that out of the glare of the sun. This wasn’t some defiant, anti-English signal. 

Canvassing around the centre of town and in the West End, I met an array of opinions – from “I’m literally supporting anyone except England,” to “Ah, it’d be nice to see them do well this year,” to, more commonly, “Yeah, I don’t mind, as long as they just stop going on about it.”

One guy outside a shop did tell us that he found it “very annoying” to see England doing well.

I’d arranged to meet up with a couple of locals to watch the game in a sports bar in the West End of Glasgow. Craig Johnstone and David Brown both make a lot of videos about ‘the football’, so I knew they’d be able to give me good insight. They brought their pal Grant, too.

Let me just say up front here, having spent an afternoon with them, I’ll now consider them my brothers 'til my last day. We laughed a lot. Grant made up a story about how he had Panamanian descent and, when quizzed further, had to admit he didn’t know the name of a single place in the country. We all laughed and, despite the geography that usually divides us, felt very together in that moment. 

As for how they all felt about England, they obviously weren’t about to go out and get Gareth Southgate’s face tattooed on their bodies, but, for the most part, they were grudgingly willing to give England a go. Apart from Grant. His Panamanian – by-way-of-west-Scotland – roots are very important to him.

The game itself was, well, you probably know about that by now. Panama took an absolute pasting. Even the most optimistic England fan couldn’t have predicted that 6-1 result, surely?

Craig, whose second team are Spurs, felt very conflicted watching Harry Kane take his hat-trick. David was caught out cheering John Stones’s goal. Grant took comfort in alcohol.

One of the more surprising things, to be honest, about watching the game here was the number of English folk. I suppose that’s not unexpected in the city’s West End. There was even one fella wearing a kilt and an England top.

Either way, I wanted to get a more ‘authentic’ experience than this, so at half-time, by which point England were 5-0 up, I headed into the centre of Glasgow. I’d heard about a sports bar there that might be a bit more ‘local’.

We arrived. It was dead. Totally dead. We played some pool and Grant’s mate showed us this incredible tattoo:

When I quizzed the bartender about why it was so quiet, she explained: “Sun’s out.” David concurred: “Tops-off weather.” Basically, it seemed that a lot of Glaswegians had opted to enjoy the sun rather than watch England romp to victory. That told its own story.

There was a brief reprise for the Scottish contingent when Panama got a consolation goal in the 78th minute, taking the score to 6-1. David shouted something about a comeback being on.

I sensed that the proprietors of this bar had partisan World Cup leanings – mainly because of a sign that read: “Anyone but England.” 

So what did I learn? Well, I learned that, while a lot of people in Glasgow would rather see England stumble, or at least not have to hear the English talk at length about 1966. There were also a large number who seemed more interested in just enjoying a sunny day than watching all that. 

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