ON the battlefield, the football pitch and the sunbed, we’ve never seen eye-to-eye. But the Germans really are our funny cousins and we’ve got more in common than you’d think.

So, before you settle down to watch the match today, arm yourself with a few new things you need to know about the Germans... and don’t, whatever you do, mention the war.

1 They’re good at football. No, really good.

In 2009 there were 6,684,462 people registered members of the German Football Association, 1,022,824 of them girls and women.

Their women are the current world soccer champs. Not content with this, they are also first place in the International Table Football rankings and now want it made into an Olympic discipline. You have been warned. PS German firm, Adidas, made the official World Cup balls...

2 They love a sausage. You’d have to, with 1,500 different varieties on offer.

3 They love beer, too. And with 1,280 breweries making more than 5,000 different brands, they’ve got plenty of choice…

4 Their ambassador to the UK is Georg Boomgaarden.

5 They invented the garden gnome. In the mid 1800s, the first garden gnomes were made in Thuringia, Germany.

6 Win or lose, shake their hand. Germans are great hand-shakers, and they like to do so when arriving and when departing. Even small children are taught to shake hands because it is simply thought to be polite.

7 Don’t tell them to get on their bike. They already do.

Seventy million bicycles are used in Germany. Cycling is the most popular leisure sport. One third of all journeys are made by bike.

8 Neanderthal man was German, named after the Neander Valley near Dusseldorf, where he was first discovered.

9 The colours of their flag; black, red and gold, are thought to come from those worn by soldiers in the Napoleonic wars. Or those used by the Holy Roman Empire.

10 They do have a sense of humour. How else could they have voted Fawlty Towers – in which the war is mentioned many, many times, their favourite foreign comedy?