It was an evening that confirmed me as a Steve McClaren fan. I shall sing his praises wherever I go. He has my unequivocal backing in everything he does in his job as England head coach. I shall defend him in the face of all opinion and, for that matter, all evidence, as a tactical mastermind and a man-manager of genius. He is a hero of the beautiful game. I shall hang on his every word and laud him to the heavens as a wit, a sage, a savant. Steve, I am your man.

Anything, rather than be counted with the England fans.

By England fans, I don’t mean you and me and all the millions of us who watched on the sofa and chuntered and grumped and wondered where on earth a bloody goal was coming from. I mean, quite specifically, the peculiar group of people who went to Barcelona to watch the match against Andorra.

No, let me rephrase that. I mean the peculiar group of people who went to Barcelona for a good old hate. One question: why on earth should McClaren give himself up to self-abuse when there are so many prepared to do the abusing for him?

Expert View

Nobody would have recommended that McClaren give a post-match interview in the guise of Kevin the Teenager

Gabby Logan

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BACKGROUND

• McClaren vows to carry on as FA stands by its maligned man

• Gerrard reduces pressure with goals

• Is it time for McClaren to go?

It began within 15 minutes. There was no thought of encouraging the players — come on, chaps, you can do it, we’re right behind you. This was a group of people hungry for hate, waiting for the first moment in which they could legitimately begin to express their hatred.

It was an absolutely poisonous occasion. And though the players got plenty of hard words, the worst were reserved for McClaren. It seemed that a vast proportion of more than 10,000 England supporters who had made the trip did so with the express intention of revelling in 90 minutes of roaring, boozy hatred.

Odd way to spend your spare cash. But what vexes me about this Nastiness Festival is the way that a bunch of abusive drunks fancy themselves as the Voice of Britain. They saw themselves as the Average Fan; better than that, the Real Fan, the football follower prepared to spend time and money to watch the team abroad.

This is something, they believe, that gives them the right to pass judgment. They must be heard and obeyed. Vox populi, vox FA. It’s more than mere abuse the fans offer, it is a genuine belief that their boozy, half-baked, ill-expressed views deserve to carry real weight in the lives of men and in the progress of the football team.

If I were McClaren I would wish bitterly that I had never agreed to take on this stupid job in the first place. And if I were a player, I would wish never to play football for these people again, never to put my heart and soul on the line for people such as this. You could see the mood of sourness sweeping through the England side, a corporate feeling of “Hell, we don’t need this. We’ve got clubs and titles to play for elsewhere.”

I always thought that the idea of “supporting” a team was connected with the notion that it would fall down without you, that you were part of the team and vice versa. That’s why football fans always speak in the first person plural. But this was the opposite of support. This was a wrecking ball. This was a bunch of people who, having first got drunk with mere drink, then got drunk with power.

It is considered a basic human right in football — the right of the paying supporter to behave in a vile and abusive fashion. It is one of those little caveats that all football people slip in when asked to comment on abuse: “They’ve paid for their seats, they have a right to their views.” A right to views, yes, but do they really have a right to hideous, violent and personal abuse?

It is something that goes without question in football, but there aren’t many other walks of life in which the outlay of a few quid gives you the same right. Admission to the Berlin Philharmonic doesn’t give the right to shout “Simon Rattle is a w****r” during a pianissimo.

But I am not writing these words as a class thing. This is not a middle-class condemnation of the proles. I am not here to insist that a better way of spending an evening in Barcelona is to sip Rioja and discuss Dali, Miró and GaudÍ out on the Ramblas. Rather, I would like to point out that vile behaviour is vile behaviour whether perpetrated by Etonians or the salt of the earth. I think it is worth pointing out that drunken abuse is vile no matter what the context, that there are better ways of spending an evening and better ways of watching football. Why should we tolerate abusive behaviour? Why should we accept that a drunken mob has some kind of moral force behind it?

Football fans love to play the part of football fans. They will act out wild orgies of loyalty, singing themselves sore in defeat and demotion, offering protestations of eternal support, and eternal love. Two years ago, in the semi-finals of the Champions League, Chelsea were defeated entirely by song at Anfield as Liverpool fans hammed their socks off as Faithful Liverpool Supporters, people to whom a solitary walk will be for ever unknown.

Fans will adopt a player and cherish him capriciously, as Chelsea supporters adored Robert Huth, not for his skill, but for clumsy and unstinting efforts to please. All these things have their roots in the joy in belonging, in sharing, in being part of a whole.

The reverse side of the same coin is the synchronised hating, the feeling that hatred and abuse are perfectly acceptable when taking place in numbers. What would be vile if performed by an individual is considered just and right and true and fair when performed by many.

This feeling is not something I can share. These people are not speaking for me. Nor, I suspect, are they speaking for most of us, those of us who contribute our millions to the England cause by sitting on the sofa and cheering and chuntering.

I have felt that McClaren was a man out of his depth from the moment of his appointment. But he can now count me as his most loyal supporter. Where the mob leads, I tend to steer away from at an angle of 180 degrees. So does every sane person.

The worst of it all is the self-righteousness, the drunken mob’s belief in its own essential rightness and goodness. Well, if that’s the voice of right, give me wrong any day. If that’s the voice of sanity, give me madness. I am hereby enrolled as the only member of Steve McClaren’s Barmy Army: a mob of a single person, the one amigo. I’ll support him evermore. I am prepared to believe that he walks on water. I want McClaren in — if only to spite the poisonous bastards of Barcelona.