Sporting loyalty is fast becoming the biggest conversation taboo, surpassing religion and politics. Try telling Liverpool or England supporters that Steven Gerrard is a diver, or call Thierry Henry a cheat in front of Arsenal or France fans and see what happens. To the first group, Gerrard was "doing everything possible for the team", so there was nothing wrong if he went down a bit too easily in that challenge. The same defence applied to Henry when he crumbled, clutching his face, after being elbowed in the chest.

Controversy is being used as desperate consolation, something to help ease losers' pain, or so it seems. "Without Gerrard's dive, his team wouldn't have won." "Henry's theatrical fall led to France's first goal and it changed the game." Portugal's Christiano Ronaldo was pilloried by England fans after playing a part in Wayne Rooney's red card, but the same fans might not frown upon Italy's Marco Materazzi, who taunted Zidane into head-butting him and getting red-carded subsequently.

The Zidane case is just one good example. If you love him, he's just a man who was standing up for his family, who was badly provoked and gave Materazzi what he deserved. But France-haters see a hot-headed player who was simply gullible, who gave in to his temper and threw everything away on the biggest possible occasion for his team, his country and himself professionally. Love him, and Materazzi is a devious player hell-bent on getting opponents sent off; hate him, and Zidane's career record of 14 red cards speaks for itself.

And the magnitude of controversy rises and falls in parallel with your loyalty or hatred. If you love Zidane, it's an issue of race, family values and even religion, and Materazzi's insult was very exceptional. But Italy fans will say: "Things like that are uttered between players all the time on the pitch." Hate Zidane and it's: "He should have let his soccer skills do the talking"; love him and, "Why didn't Materazzi, to begin with?"

The bottom line is that most soccer fans would be ready to switch to the other side of the argument had the roles of the players involved in such an incident been reversed. The use of technology will surely help, but in the end sport fans will see only what they want to see and hear only what they want to hear. Does controversy constitute the "charm" of sport? Fifa has tried to make us believe so. Whether it is true or not is open to debate; what is certain is that sporting loyalty has exposed our hypocrisy like nothing else.

And the best part is, while we would get mad at being called a hypocrite on other matters, the label does not bother us where sports is concerned. To Manchester United fans, Arsene Wenger and Jose Mourinho will remain bad losers. The same goes for Alex Ferguson in the eyes of fans of rival teams. When your team is awarded a controversial penalty: "We deserved it; how many times did decisions go against us?" When your opponents get a similar penalty: "Hell, they have been lucky all the time."

This is not a change of heart in this space, where Fifa's sadistic fondness for controversy has been slammed. But it's time we fans shared the blame. Would the World Cup be more enjoyable if 90 per cent of refereeing decisions were correct? It probably would but, painful as it is, we have to admit that in that case there would surely have been less talk about the Berlin final by now.