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Lion or Zion?: Anglo-Jewish football fans face a tough choice - should they cheer on England or Israel when they clash in a European Championship game on Saturday? As the teams face each other for the first time in a competitive match, Seth Freedman discovers how the supporters are divided (Seth Freedman, March 22, 2007, The Guardian)

It's incredible the difference a ceasefire makes. Seven months after Liverpool manager Rafa Benítez deemed it "totally unacceptable" to take his team to Israel to play Maccabi Haifa in the Champions League, the biggest match ever on Israeli soil is about to take place. Last summer's Lebanon war was the latest in a long list of events that have caused sporting events to be switched to safer shores for security reasons. But with the country experiencing a period of relative calm, England's footballers will face Israel in a vital clash in Tel Aviv on Saturday.

The match will see issues of loyalty and patriotism take centre stage for Jewish football fans, both in England and in Israel. The European Championships qualifier is the first competitive match between the two national teams. They are tied on seven points in their qualifying group, and each is desperate for points in order to close the gap on leaders Croatia. England's only previous games against Israel were two friendlies in Tel Aviv in the mid-1980s, and the gulf between the two sides has narrowed greatly since then.

For most fans at the Ramat Gan Stadium, there can be no doubt who they will be singing their hearts out for. Native Israelis, or Sabras, will don the blue and white of their flag, neck a few bottles of Goldstar, the local beer, and get behind their team of underdogs. As for the few thousand England fans who decide to brave the heavily armed Israeli security forces at Ben Gurion airport, they will be roaring on their squad of underachieving prima donnas, desperate to see the iron of the English lion in Zion.

But, dotted around the stands, in the bars of Ramat Gan, and in the pubs of north-west London, there will be the torn. When it comes to the crunch - assuming a football match is the closest these two allied states will come to war - whose colours will they cheer?