Only the Brave of Heart Need Apply Here

LONDON -- Apparently England and Scotland once warred for hundreds of years in the Middle Ages and unwittingly helped get Mel Gibson a directing Oscar, showing how war’s adversity can linger for centuries.

Nowadays both help make up the same country, the United Kingdom, so that technically there’s no border, except in the most crucial of all life pursuits: football.

(Or “soccer,” for slang.)

“United Kingdom” has no national football team, but “England” and “Scotland” and “Wales” and “Northern Ireland” do, with only “England” qualifying for the 2006 World Cup finals in Germany, and with “Scotland” finishing third in its qualifying group, after qualifying for eight previous World Cups but never lasting more than three matches.

With Scotland removed, would many of the 5.2 million Scots throw their support behind England?

Just what kind of a planet do you think this is?

It’s said that one of Scotland’s most famous mid-20th-century football players ranked England’s 1966 World Cup title among his bleakest days and golfed on the day of the final to avoid observing the merriment at Wembley in London.

It’s also reported that the Labour party’s present-day first Minister of Scotland announced publicly he wouldn’t pull for England, and that United Kingdom Chancellor Gordon Brown, a Scot, said he would pull for England and thus drew criticism from some Scottish people, and that tennis pro Andy Murray, a native of Dunblane, Scotland, said he’d don a Paraguay T-shirt when Paraguay played England.

Also, that if Murray didn’t find a Paraguay shirt, he or anybody else would have a tough time finding a Trinidad and Tobago shirt, because Trinidad and Tobago shirts have become so very vogue in Scotland that the stores ran out days ago.

That’s because the Trinidad and Tobago roster counts six players from Scottish leagues, but more because Trinidad and Tobago will oppose England on Thursday in Nuremberg, so that an Adidas spokesman told The Scotsman newspaper, “We do expect a high level of interest in Trinidad and Tobago merchandise in Scotland, as we do from any team that’s playing England, really.”

In the northern edges of this esteemed island, the radio might just play you a new World Cup song, dedicated to a Trinidad and Tobago striker inconceivably named Jason Scotland, who plays for St. Johnstone in Scotland’s First Division (second tier). The impossibly titled “Scotland, Scotland ... Jason Scotland” notes that Scotland did make the World Cup after all, and takes a few lines to lament the horror of having to hear incessantly about England’s team.

Humans do love their borders.