WHILE many football fans in this country may be celebrating the fact that an Australian side did so well in this year's Asian Champions League and now is competing in the Club World Cup, I just can't bring myself to join them.

And you want to know the reason – well it's simple, because that team is Adelaide United.

When watching Adelaide compete in the latter stages of the ACL tournament particular against Bundyodkor and Gamba Osaka my girlfriend would say: "You've got to go for them. They're Australian!"

My response was always you wouldn't expect a Boca Juniors fan (I'm one of those as well just so you know) to support fellow Argentinean rival, River Plate if they got to the latter stages of a continental competition, would you?!

And as Adelaide is one of Melbourne's closest rivals, I can't bring myself to show them any support, no matter what it would mean for football in this country. I just couldn't live with myself as a self-respecting Victory supporter.

So deep inside I was extremely pleased when Gamba Osaka managed to put five past them in the final and deny them the chance of being Asian champions. I would have liked six, just to make for a nice symmetry with the Adelaide defeat in the 2006-07 Grand Final, but it wasn't to be. The fact that Melbourne had also managed to score against the team from Osaka also provided me with some solace.

Another reason for my lack of support for a fellow Australian is that I wouldn't want another team apart from my own Melbourne Victory being the first team from this country to hold aloft the Asian Champions League trophy.

We as fans would love to be able to lord it over our rivals as being the first ever Australian champion of Asia. Adelaide United's failure still means that we have that chance. And as a fan that means a lot.

On Thursday night when Waikatere United scored that unlikely goal it was another cause for celebration. I knew the lead wouldn't last - and it didn't - but I could just imagine a whole bunch of Adelaide fans cursing their TV screens in frustration. It made my night in what was a rather dull football match.

John Foot, in his excellent book on Italian football, Calcio, dedicates a few pages to this kind of anti-support. In Italian they call it gufare or againstism. Simply put gufare is "to bring bad luck, to hope for the bad luck of another, to snort, to hoot, to scoff, to support against"*.

He also writes of the glorious tradition amongst Italian football fans of againstism and supporting whoever is playing against the team you hate and is often linked to local rivalries.

Without another Melbourne or Victorian team in the A-League, the attention of my againstism and that of many of my fellow Victory fans, must therefore turn to our closest rivals, that being Adelaide United and Sydney FC.

So for all those Adelaide United fans out there when I am supporting Gamba Osaka, Bundyodkor or Waikatere United, I am continuing a long and glorious football tradition and in fact I wouldn't expect anything different if our roles were reversed.

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* John Foot, Calcio, Second Edition, Harper Perennial, London, 2007, p.346

Neil was very happy that Gamba Osaka beat Adelaide United 1-0 in the Club World Championship on Sunday night. He also highly recommends reading John Foot's Calcio - its one of the best football books going around. In his spare time he is also the editor of the84thminuteand also runs the Victory In Melbourne site.