Sorry, Harry – this World Cup I’m supporting Mexico

My earliest World Cup memory is not of a match but of a bus.

It was July 1966, and I had just watched England win the World Cup. I was a young boy among the crowds lining the streets as the victorious team made its way from Wembley through London.

I was running alongside the team coach as it crawled towards a victory party in Kensington, looking up through the window at Nobby Stiles, grinning broadly as he basked in the adulation of a nation.

I can still remember the smile and the thumbs-up he regularly gave me.

What strikes me now is not just the memory itself but the innocence of it. Imagine trying that today, when a World Cup-winning team would travel behind layers of armed security, police escorts and barriers.

Yet in 1966, a young fan could simply run beside the bus carrying England’s heroes and exchange a grin with one of them through the window.

Sixty years and 15 World Cups later, another is underway. I have seen every tournament since that day in one form or another: from grainy TV pictures to giant screens in sports bars from London to Dubai.

I’ve also attended a few of them – in Japan, Germany and Spain.

I have suffered through England’s penalty flops, their false dawns, their golden generations and their inevitable disappointments.

Which is why I have decided, finally, that enough is enough. For this World Cup, after “60 years of hurt”, I will not be supporting England.

After six decades of emotional investment and repeated let-downs, I have reached a state that can only be described as sporting enlightenment. England can now proceed without me – though my hero namesake Harry Kane will always have my 100 percent backing.

Instead, I find myself looking elsewhere for victory.

In the regrettable absence of the UAE team (bad luck chaps!), Morocco, after reaching the semifinals last time, looks the only plausible regional candidate. It would certainly be popular in Dubai with its big North African diaspora.

One of the joys of watching a World Cup in the UAE is that almost every nation on Earth appears to have a local constituency. The tournament transforms Dubai into the world’s largest neutral fan-zone.

Brazilians, Argentines, English, Germans, Egyptians, Moroccans and dozens of others all watch the same matches, often in the same bars, while arguing passionately for entirely different outcomes.

That cosmopolitan quality feels particularly important this year. The past few months have been dominated by discussions of war, airspace closures, missile attacks and economic gloom.

For a region emerging cautiously from one of the most unsettling periods in its history, there is something reassuring about hearing conversations return to football.

The bars are filling again and the TV screens are surrounded by amateur tacticians and self-appointed experts. Perfect strangers are finding common ground through a shared conviction that the referee has made a terrible mistake.

Normality, of a sort, is returning. Which brings me to my preferred winner.

After considerable reflection, and assisted by a delightfully whimsical article in The Economist debating who should win, I have settled on… Mexico.

The bookmakers don’t agree. But Mexico possesses many of the qualities that neutrals admire: passionate supporters, a rich football culture and a habit of arriving at tournaments carrying the hopes of people far beyond their own borders – mostly in the US.

There is another consideration. The prospect of President Donald Trump presenting the gleaming trophy to a triumphant Mexican captain – from a country he clearly detests – would be just delicious.

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My Dubai World Cup headquarters will probably be McGettigan’s in Barsha Heights, usually home to the UAE Spurs supporters’ club but which I’m hoping to transform into a mariachi nightclub.

Whether Mexico can actually win is, of course, another matter entirely.

But supporting a football team is not always about winning – sometimes it is about hope, sometimes romance. And occasionally it is about irritating politicians.

Despite the Fifa kitsch and the commercialisation, the World Cup retains its ability to make strangers care about the same thing at the same time. In a city such as Dubai built by people from every corner of the world, that is no small achievement.

As for England, I wish them well, truly. Scotland too – but let’s keep it in the realm of the plausible, shall we?

Frank Kane is Editor-at-Large of AGBI and an award-winning business journalist. He acts as a consultant to the Ministry of Energy of Saudi Arabia