We have found common ground with Germany when it comes to rail woes - David Behrens

This culture of sanctioned skiving was so endemic that by teatime on Sunday Northern Trains had warned everyone not to even try going anywhere for the rest of the day.

If ever there was a two-fingered salute to the customers who pay their wages, this was it. Make your own way home; we’re watching the football.

In this context, the plea from one rail boss to an incoming Labour government not to nationalise the whole network rang especially hollow. It came from Graham Sutherland, chief executive of FirstGroup, as his firm posted a 27 per cent increase in profits – despite being stripped of its failing TransPennine service.

With both the likely election result and the threat of more of his lucrative bus franchises being taken back into public control, Mr Sutherland can obviously see the gravy train leaving without him. Sorry, mate; make your own way home.

But if the transport system benefitted England’s armchair fans, those attempting to see the matches live in Germany faced a catalogue of cultural complications.

Lufthansa Airlines, mindful no doubt of the reputation of Englishmen abroad, issued expensively-printed leaflets to incoming fans with advice on how to deal with the natives and their “peculiarly German characteristics”.

These included getting elbowed out of the way in a queue and being glared at when trying to cross the road on a red light – both common occurrences, apparently. The tone was jocular but wearisome; English football fans were clearly an inconvenience their hosts could well do without.

And when you compare the mindsets of the two countries, you can see why. Statistically, Germans these days enjoy less unemployment, lower inflation and greater political stability than we do. They have eight hospital beds for every 1,000 people compared with our two-and-a-half; and generally better health even though they smoke more.

They have much lower crime rates, too – perhaps because they place more value on education. Absenteeism from school is punishable by sending parents to prison so few would contemplate taking their kids out for even a day without written permission.

Here, when someone tries to introduce stricter rules or healthier school dinners there is hell to pay, as the Dixons Academies Trust has discovered in Yorkshire and Liverpool. It’s at the eye of a storm for punishing unruly pupils in an attempt to drive up standards – a regime which parents have complained encroaches on their liberty. Yet our civil rights rating is lower than Germany’s, for all its strictures.

Who’d have expected so 80 years ago, when earlier leaflets on how to handle the locals were distributed to occupying British soldiers?

There remains one area, though, in which our two nations are equally matched – and it’s in our appalling rail services.

Train strikes have been as common in Germany this year as in the UK and punctuality no better. Germany’s railways were once a source of national pride, a model of efficiency in a country famous for making things run on time. Now, Deutsche Bahn is a “bottomless pit” for taxpayers, according to the national auditor. It’s entirely publicly owned, by the way, so incoming Labour MPs might be careful what they wish for.

But travelling in Germany is at least made easier by its world-leading network of autobahns. We, on the other hand, lead the world only in contraflows. People from other nations marvel at our vast collection of cones as they crawl up the M1 at four miles a fortnight because we’re having to restore the hard shoulders we spent the previous decade digging up.

And Germans have a higher regard for their national infrastructure than we do, if you believe the stats. Some 82 per cent approve of the state apparatus, compared with under a third of British voters who think public services haven’t gone downhill in the last five years.

For a few days around July 14, however, only one statistic will matter and it will be the result from the Olympiastadion in Berlin. Good luck trying to get a train out of there.