Fans fight old image with silly hats

There's no edge to this World Cup because it's been packaged like American sport, yet the compensations have been truly rewarding. It might prove to be just a one-off and, as Franz Beckenbauer pointed out last week, Germany's next edition in 2006 will possess a more familiar feel, yet some throwbacks we could do without.

Whoever these folk are who make up the bulk of England's support here - you meet plenty of backpacker types, well-heeled couples and ex-pats - they've set an encouraging precedent.

Because sometimes new images stick. Think of how the Scottish fans abroad, reviled as pariahs back in the early seventies, were reinvented as the loveable Tartan Army and have never stopped trying to keep it that way. Why couldn't this happen with England's army?

For the first time in a generation, they've been welcomed with astonishing hospitality and respect wherever they've gone and they've reciprocated. The key has been that Japan has soaked up all the mass publicity about hooligans and has found instead that they were just scare stories. There was not a single arrest in Niigata on Saturday night.

The players have seen enough of the joyous Niigata congas and opposition national anthems being respected to suspect something important may be going on here.

"Everyone's enjoying themselves in the stadium and that's important because it's gone out of football a little bit," said skipper David Beckham. "It's been something that the players will never forget."

And, ultimately, it's those players who are actually doing as much as anyone to create the new feel. In Charleroi during Euro 2000, the team played pre-historic football and some of the fans were like Neanderthals. Yet when you support a team that is young, vibrant, popular and successful, then the feelgood factor surely rubs off.

Maybe it's wishful thinking and once in the squares of Lisbon in 2004, during the European Championships, and the beer halls of Berlin in 2006, at the next World Cup, all this will have seemed like a sweet, distant memory.

Yet perhaps the point really does come when it dawns how it's much more fun to be embraced by your hosts than to be loathed.

So, with a bit of luck and regardless of what happens on Friday, the month when England turned Japanese may yet be seen as a watershed for our national team and our national game.