Since the Chinese started kicking a ball around some 400 years before the Common Era began, the game of football has sharply divided opinions amongst it's followers. I've been watching, playing, studying and supporting football for forty-years now, but despite that enormous amount of knowledge, I still find that some people disagree with me!

It is strange because I know that I'm right. That's just it isn't it? All of us football followers know that we are right. Any two of us can watch the same incident at the same time from the same angle and formulate two completely different opinions about what happened, why it happened and what we should do about it.

I wrote the other day about the Mascherano sending off and I was certain of my opinion. The replies to that article and other writing elsewhere has shown that opinion is actually almost totally split in half between thinking it was a good decision and thinking it was a bad decision. Some of those who agreed with me on this one were people who rarely agree with my opinions and some who disagreed are people with whom I normally find common ground.

That is why we all love football. It really is a game of opinions and long may it continue. Giving an opinion about the team you support or game they have been involved in or a player who plays for the team is not worth the paper it's written on. I occasionally write about my beloved Watford and I am sure that we have never had a fair referee, never had a player rightly sent off and never had a goal rightly disallowed. I'm not lying in my opinions, I genuinely see the games through some sort of yellow filter system that turns me into someone unable to see anything other than the unfairness of everything going against my team.

That, of course, doesn't mean I'm not allowed to attack and criticise my own team. I've got an 'O' level in it! I can slag them off as much as I like, but nobody else can. It's like family. You can say anything you like about your mum, but you'll tear the face off anyone else who does!

In the Mascherano incident it would be very difficult to find many Liverpool fans who felt it was a good decision. It is equally difficult to find many Manchester United fans who thought it was a bad decision. Liverpool fans point at the unfairness of the referees decisions and United fans point out that he was 'asking for it'.

My point is this. Neither set of fans are saying anything that they do not passionately believe. They have as much knowledge, common sense and understanding of the game as each other, but they have genuinely seen different incidents.

I'm an England fan. I haven't yet met any England fan who can see any foul committed by any English player in the disallowed goal by Sol Campbell in the Euro quarter final against Portugal in 2004. Reaction across the World was that English people are blind and that there was an obvious foul. I could watch it on freeze frame and I still won't see a foul. I genuinely won't see one.

I can go back to the FA Cup final in 1984 when Watford were cheated by the referee. Andy Gray (him again) quite clearly fouled Watford goalkeeper Steve Sherwood in scoring Everton's second and decisive goal. It was the clearest foul you could ever see and I'll never understand how the goal was allowed. I haven't come across an Everton fan who thinks it was a foul, and opinion between neutrals is totally divided.

It's really important to have an opinion though. You can't sit on the fence and say "Well, I can see both sides." If you do that you can't possibly be a real footy fan because you just haven't got the passion required to be a lover of the beautiful game. In every other walk of life you believe things that you see with your own eyes. Therefore, if I see Ronaldo or Drogba or Robbie Keane take a dive I'm immediately out of my seat, "You dirty cheating scumbag" I shout. The Manchester United, Chelsea or Tottenham fan is screaming for a penalty and crying about referee bias if it isn't given.

All fans have a chip on their shoulder. We all think the media, referees, other supporters, the FA and Uncle Tom Cobbley and all have 'got it in' for our team. We are all right. They have.

The reason we are so passionate is because we see what we see and we can't understand why anyone would have seen anything different. You want to grab the people arguing with you and shout repeatedly, "You are wrong, you are wrong, just look at the incident you idiot." Of course, they want to scream the same at you. (Good job we do all this on line and not face to face!)

It is for all these reasons that for so many people football is a way of life and never just, as the say, a game. We watch the games, we discuss the incidents and we argue about decisions, team selection, players and everything you could possibly think of to argue about. Then, all of a sudden the next game is approaching and you can argue about what is going to happen rather than what has happened.

I love it. There is nothing like it. Football is a game of opinions and long may it continue.