Germany’s Miroslav Klose celebrates his goal in the national team’s match against England in the second round of the 2010 World Cup. Germany went onto win 4:1. Photo: picture-alliance / M.i.S.-Sportpressefoto

So yesterday was “Der Klassiker”, as it’s known. The two European nations whose armed forces locked horns on a monolithic scale twice in one century, who threw entire generations of their youth into the slaughter and who, now that the age of tank battles and D-Day-landings is thankfully past, carry on their mythic struggle on the football pitch: England vs. Germany.

Now, as an Englishman living in Germany by choice, you might expect this to be a difficult moment for me – a kind of civil war of the heart, a question of torn loyalties and a long, heartfelt weighing up of allegiances.

Germany’s Miroslav Klose celebrates his goal in the national team’s match against England in the second round of the 2010 World Cup. Germany went onto win 4:1. Photo: picture-alliance / M.i.S.-Sportpressefoto

Now that the French are out of the way with the unexpected bonus of more Schadenfreude than we could possibly have asked for, Irish World Cup ambitions revert to seeing the English knocked out as soon as possible. For me personally, this takes on added significance as the task falls to Germany, the country I now call home.