YES, I am nostalgic about football, and yes, it was a huge part of me from early childhood.

Now? Not so much. Possibly because I lived in Glasgow for 25 years and as a refuweegee, I saw the sectarian nonsense at first hand.

I have no time for religion and when it is a complicit bedfellow with our national sport, please include me out, as Hollywood mogul Samuel Goldwyn famously said.

It will be worth having grandchildren for no other reason than to bore the pants off them
with my tales of seeing Scotland play at not one but two World Cups.

Sadly my football ennui now extends to our national team too. The entire Scotland squad could walk past me on Sinclair Street and apart from Craig Gordon and Ryan Christie, I wouldn't recognise any of them.

And my atavism is further degraded by events like last week's big Hampden game against Portugal. Time was, when I lived in the Dear Green Place, I would have gone to the match, sung myself hoarse, then celebrated or drowned my sorrows with a few pints in the Bay Horse afterwards.

Now the prospect of lining up for the train into Glasgow after the game and then another out to the 'burgh just gives me the heave.

Moreover, there is a change in mood which troubles me. Yes I know these things are cyclical and one day we'll be fantastic and Portugal will be rubbish, but given all the hoopla in the media and online, you'd have thought we'd won the cup rather than drawing
with them 0-0 - at home!

And further vitriol was thrown on megastar Cristiano Ronaldo, because he stormed off the
field when the referee ended the game before the Portuguese thought he should have. I'd have been grateful just to have seen one of the world's best players on Scottish soil.

By its nature football is partisan. It is divisive. It is fuelled by rivalry and tribalism. I know
only too well, having been slaughtered online after a newspaper article I wrote recently about my home town team, Inverness Caledonian Thistle. (Fear not, this is not the only organ in which I am paid to offend people.)

The abuse was vile and, of course, the keyboard warriors were protected by the Aegis of anonymity. Luckily I have a very thick skin.

But what took me to the giddy limit was the outroar in many quarters, among them fans, ex-players and the right wing media, to the appointment of German coach Thomas Tuchel to the England manager's job.

Too many references to sunbeds and world wars, too many racial stereotypes and too much made of the man's nationality.

My only opprobrium to his appointment is that while Scotland celebrate a draw, he might win
England the World Cup. And if that happens, given the longevity of the 1966 trope, I truly will be done with football.