We should support Germany on Sunday

This Sunday, Germany will play Brazil in the final of the World Cup. It's the first time the two sides have ever met in the competition's 72-year history and, from my own straw poll, it seems likely that among those Englishmen watching the match on TV, many more will be supporting Brazil than Germany.

While some have persuaded themselves that they simply prefer Brazil's "beautiful game", others are more candid about supporting anyone other than the Germans, citing historical enmities, previous sporting contests and Hugo Boss menswear as the principal reasons for not cheering on Oliver Kahn and his team-mates. But as a Scot who has supported England in their five World Cup matches, I'd like to make the case why all of us should now back Germany instead of Brazil.

For a start, as the Brazilian Rivaldo demonstrated so clearly during the early stages of the competition, in the South Americans' controversial 2-1 defeat of Turkey, "the beautiful game" is played by a bunch of cheats and fakers.

Turkish defender Hakan Unsal was ordered off the pitch by the referee after he kicked the ball in frustration at Rivaldo as the Brazilian player waited by the corner flag in injury time. The Brazilian collapsed, holding his face in agony, as if it had been smashed to a pulp but, as Unsal headed towards the tunnel, the replay on the giant TV screens in the Ulsan Munsu stadium revealed that Rivaldo had actually been hit on the shin, and the ball had been nowhere near his now sheepishly grinning ugly mug.

Exposed before all the world as a liar and a fraud, Rivaldo should have been sent off immediately; instead, he stayed on and scored the winning penalty. Is that the kind of sportsmanship that could ever be described as part of a beautiful game?

I suspect that there are many Turks who will look on Rivaldo with the same contempt that Englishmen reserve for Argentine cheats, such as Diego "Hand of God" Maradona and Diego Simeone, who made a similar meal of a tap on the leg from a prone David Beckham in the 1998 World Cup, which resulted in Beckham's infamous sending-off. Faking injury, diving, spitting, abuse and callous fouls are as much a feature of the South American game as spectacular free kicks and dazzling ball control.

Those thinking of supporting Brazil would do well to remember Rivaldo's Oscarwinning performance, and to bear in mind that he hails from a country that for many years harboured Europe's fugitives and war criminals; not to mention the fact that a British tourist walking in Rio is more likely to be invited to part with his watch and his wallet than to join in a game of football on Copacabana Beach.

Germany is a very different place. There, almost everyone speaks English - often much better than we do ourselves - and while no one is ever going to invite you to kick a ball in Berlin's Tiergarten, they're not going to mug you, either. Germany is one of the safest, most polite countries in the world and every time I go there - about twice a year - I am surprised at how like us they are. Indeed, I always find it remarkable that we should have fought two wars with these people. And the worst that you can say about them is that their television programmes are awful.

We drink their beer, we eat their sausage and, in enormous-quantities, we buy their BMWs, VWs, Mercedes Benzes, Bosch dishwashers, Krups food-mixers, AEG washing-machines, Siemens freezers and Neff cookers. We even buy their footballers: just a couple of days ago, Blackburn Rovers signed Marc Sebastian Pelzer from Kaiserslautern; while Christian Ziege plays for Tottenham, a team that has always bought German: until his retirement in 1998, German World Cup '94 star Jurgen Klinsmann was one of Tottenham's most popular and successful players.

In return, the Germans pay us the compliment of employing our leading architects - Lord Foster and Lord Rogers - to rebuild their new capital city, they buy our books and music, and, most peculiarly, they love our Royal Family. (Even Hitler loved our Royal Family, and while we are on the subject of Hitler, it's worth remembering that Hitler wasn't a German, but an Austrian.) With the sole exception of Der Spiegel, the German Press was universal in its praise of the Queen and the Jubilee celebrations. A spokesman for the ZDF channel said: "In Germany, people adore the Queen - after all, she is German.? Which is, after all, almost true.

It's not just the Queen the Germans admire. Only a couple of weeks ago, the German Ambassador to Great Britain, Dr Hans-Friedrich von Ploetz, was telling listeners to BBC Radio's Today programme that Germans would almost certainly be supporting England in their match against Denmark. It seemed that Germans were even prepared to support us against the French. So shouldn't we return the compliment?

IT might even be in our economic interests so to do, for there is no doubt that winning the World Cup has a positive effect on a nation's economy. Despite having four million unemployed, Germany is still the industrial powerhouse of Europe and its "feelgood" spending will almost certainly benefit the rest of the European Union.

But if you still need convincing that you should be supporting Germany on Sunday, then consider this. England did not play particularly well against Brazil.

By contrast, last September, on a glorious night in Munich, during the qualifying rounds for the World Cup, England beat Germany 5-1. If Germany do win the World Cup on Sunday then at least we'll have the consolation of knowing for sure just who has the better football team.

Philip Kerr is the author of The Berlin Trilogy.