God save Queen Elizabeth II of Germany!

Gascoigne comforts Southgate, who just missed the decisive penalty in the 1996 Euro Cup semi-final.Richard Pelham / CORDON PRESS

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"Don't let reality spoil good news for you," says the most cynical of journalistic adages.

Well, the reality is that the old rivalry between England and Germany is, fundamentally, an artifice.

Both in historical and football terms, despite the two world wars and the fact that they have met numerous times in the final phase of both the Eurocup and the World Cup.

The English and Germans have historically linked them from the language (both of Germanic origin) to trade already in times of the Hanseatic League in the Middle Ages, or the Napoleonic wars (with Prussia allied to England against France). The imperial anxieties of Kaiser Wilhelm II, which would end up leading to World War I and this to the Second, mark a line of confrontation that is not between England against Germany, but between half the world against Imperial Germany, first, and Germany. Nazi and the Axis, later.

The supposed rivalry between the two countries is a myth born in the heat of the tendency of the British to present themselves as the saviors of Europe, forgetting that it was the United States and the Soviet Union, with the key help of the United Kingdom, yes, but the contribution also of many others, who liberated the continent. Even after World War II, also during the worst crises between the United Kingdom and the European Union, Germany has always been a bridge between the islands and the mainland, never a barrier. Brexit is not the child of a conflict between the British and the Germans, but of the British with themselves.

And if the best kept secret in Paris is that it rains more than in London, the best kept secret of the British monarchy is that it is actually German. It has been since, in 1714, Queen Anne died without a successor and the British, who could not allow a Catholic to access the throne (and it is still prohibited today, in these times of protection of all kinds of minorities ...) ended up skipping half one hundred Catholic relatives of the deceased queen to offer the throne to a second cousin, a Protestant of course: Georg Ludwig of Hanover (actually, House of Brunswick-Lüneber, Hanover line), who became George I of Great Britain and Ireland without speaking a word of English. When Queen Victoria, whose mother tongue was German, passed away in 1901, the British throne passed to her son Edward VII,a member of the House of Saxe-Coburg Gotha as the son of Prince Albert, Victoria's husband, who never lost his marked German accent. He was the son of Edward VII, George Frederick Ernest Albert, who reigned as George V, who in 1917, in the midst of World War I (at that time, Germany was the enemy), decided to change the name of the dynasty and the Germanic Saxe -Coburg Gotha became the very British Windsor.

In football, Germany-England is a classic, but more than rivalry, what there is is hegemony. German hegemony, it is understood. Although England have won the most important game (4-2 with a phantom goal at old Wembley in the 1966 World Cup final), since then Germany has always won when they have met in qualifying rounds (in groups England usually win and pass both ). This was the case in the World Cups in Mexico 70, Spain 82, Italy 90 and in South Africa 2010. Also at the 1972 Euro Cup (with a 1-3 at Wembley of which Günter Netzer will always be remembered) and in the semifinals of the European Championship. 1996, also at Wembley, with a German victory on penalties. Gareth Southgate, the current England manager, missed the last shot.

The German superiority has been so overwhelming that Gary Lineker ended up coining one of the most famous definitions in football: "A very simple game in which 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and in the end the Germans always win."

They were different times.

Now, the Germans don't always win ...

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