Massive superiority complex and misplaced arrogance. It brings out the worst in the whole population. Particularly bad are the ones who know nothing about sport. Most recently having a conversation about rugby just after the 6 nations. I made a comment which was responded to by an older English lad very confidently with "come back to me when you beat us" to which I laughed and replied "you mean like this year, or last year or the year before that." Or the dickhead my wife saw yesterday wandering down the street shouting "eng-ha lund eng-ah-lund" only stopping to stick his head in the door of the kebab shop and Turkish barbers to shout racist shite at them.
Thankfully I married an Irish girl and have mates that treat it like a rivalry, same as we do. Cheering and giving me shit when we lose or have crap results (memorably the draw against the Faroes). I wanted to go to Germany and tried to convince one of these mates to come with me, he wouldn't, saying that he would have done had England not qualified but didn't want to go and have the Germans (or anyone else) associate him with the rest of his countrymen.
I always like to tell them that half their team should have been missing from the final in '66 had the semi been refereed correctly, having spent 90 minutes taking turns kicking the fuck out of Eusebio (something my dad goes on about), so really the goal given that didn't cross the line just typified how corrupt that whole tournament was.
In fairness the jingoism has died down a bit over the last few years and yesterday meant I got a lovely round of golf in on an empty course while the rest of England tried to drink more than three cans of cider while comparing guts and bad tattoos before seeing their team capitulate and giving their wives a slap to reassert their superiority complex and misplaced arrogance.