Come on do the England posters here really believe the rest of the world hates them because "it's coming home" or colonial past as if there aren't other countries in Europe who also have a colonial past?
Reality is the negative reactions come from the fact being English a universal language and the English media being so global everyone knows what their pundits say and sometimes they get a bit excited as soon England is progressing during the competition.
Is that so different from other nations or other pundits? Maybe not, its like for example in Portugal the media only respected Spain or Uruguay and didn't mentioned Morocco or Iran, even if the players or manager don't think the same way.
For example watching a game betwen Colombia and Senegal I heard Danny Murphy saying England doesn't have nothing to fear from those teams, you can take it both ways, I can think he is dismissing other teams because they aren't Germany or Brazil, on the other hand why do they have to be always political correct if it is what they think?
Then there is always the smaller countries syndroma, I cannot speak for Croatia, but when it is Portugal against bigger countries a lot of times the media likes to show dismissive comments coming from the other side to create a siege mentality, "They are all against us" "We are going to teach them a lesson", Mourinho was the first master with this at Porto, while Scolari mastered it with Portugal, does this really makes a difference?
Perhaps not, but I remember that
famous game on 2006 in Nuremberg between Portugal and Netherlands where this siege mentality was visible during the match, did it mattered to win?
Don't know, but when you are on short tournaments representing your nation sometimes if you don't have all the same weapons as your so called bigger opponents you have to create other scenarios to win.
This just to say forget the notion everyone hates us, in other countries the media also have arrogant pundits dismissive of other countries, at the end of the day England also pays the price of their media having a global presence around the world.
By the way, the day when you win a major tournament who do you think will have a bigger meltdown? Will it be the rest of Europe, South America, or maybe Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Ireland will be all very happy with the outcome?