World cup

The best team won, and the best two teams reached the final. This is a comparatively rare event at a world cup. And it was a fine world cup in general, with plenty of things to gladden the heart – the hammering of Spain by the Netherlands, the hammering of Brazil by Germany, the eviction at stage one of teams who think too highly of themselves, the emergence of doughty underdogs (Iran, Ghana, Chile, Costa Rica). The Netherlands remain an enigma; they are either wonderfully fluent or suddenly turn into England. But their record, for a country with a fifth of our population, is excellent.

If you’re walking through any built-up area in England between 8 and 10pm this Sunday and you hear a cheer you can be pretty sure it means one thing – Germany have scored yet again. One of the great myths we were fed as children in the 1980s and ‘90s was that the English don’t like the Germans, and in particular the living representatives of all things Teutonic on earth, the German national football team. We love ‘em, and I imagine most English people will be supporting Germany on Sunday. I remember being stuck in the countryside in 2006 and watching the Argentina-Germany quarter-final in a pub; the place went wild when Germany equalised and then won.

Sorry – bit of an interregnum in the World Cup diary, caused principally by England’s pathetic capitulation. But still the tournament gives pleasure, perhaps to a greater degree than it has done in thirty years or more. Watching Brazil get stuffed on their own midden heap was an enormous pleasure. Their thuggery in the previous round, against Colombia, came back to haunt them; there is karma in football. That’s why Leeds Utd are still in the lower reaches of the Championship.  Germany were magnificent; Brazil gave in after the second goal — but truth be told, they were never terribly good. One thing bothers me, though — at the start of these games the opposing players are horribly matey and affectionate to one another.

I’ve been cheering for the Dutch as a sort of thank-you for them humiliating Spain. But there was something thoroughly unpleasant about the way they dispatched Mexico, the world’s great footballing under-achievers. The fairly horrible, if undoubtedly talented, Arjen Robben dived for the penalty which won the game. It may have been a foul, of a sort – although I don’t think so, and mere contact should never be enough to warrant a foul – but whatever, the bald Dutchman dived, and should have been booked. Previously, toothless Uruguay had deservedly lost to Colombia: we are beginning to understand just how utterly shite England were, no? England bottom of a group in which the triumphant top two all go out in the next round (probably).

What a fabulously boring England performance. I watched it only because I had this to write and now feel resentful towards you, which is unfair. Because I don’t suppose you want to hear anything about it, really. The inquest into our national team’s appalling performance at this World Cup (“I couldn’t have asked for any more from the players” – ©Roy Hodgson, every game. Well in which case, mate, you’re the wrong bloke for the job.) has of course already begun. It is being said that Woy has been given an easy ride – which is a way, I suppose, of not giving him one. But when we look for the reasons it’s worth remembering this.

Still going on, is it, the World Cup? There have been some fine games and some poor games with surprisingly thrilling conclusions. Ronaldo, with possibly the worst haircut I have seen on a human being ever, provided a wonderful chipped cross for Portugal to equalise against the USA; neither team, one suspects will trouble the big boys and I doubt the Portuguese will get out of the group. Good! Russia may also fail to do so and have been exactly as boring as Russia always are when it comes to the final stages of a World Cup. Belgium, meanwhile, look rather less menacing than all the experts suggested they would be.

So England are out the World Cup; the Three Lions rolled over - and we can expect plenty more gloomy Anglo introspection about failings over the coming days. But Alex Salmond must be even more gutted than anyone south of the Border. Over at SNP HQ, they would have been cheering England’s boys on like crazy - because if ever there were something more certain to elicit anti-English sentiment among the Scots in the run up to a referendum, it would be a successful World Cup run. As an Englishman who has lived in Scotland, I'm afraid I know how unbearable it can all seem when England is doing well in a tournament.  And just think of all the lager-fuelled, synthetic passion, and off-putting chauvinism --  had we beaten Uruguay and Italy.

Could there be a more timely advert for the Better Together campaign than on the field of sport? What the England football team manifestly need is the man who is now the best British player, an offensive winger with the speed of a cheetah and the tactical brain of Rommel — proud Welshman, proud Brit, Gareth Bale. My obsession during international sports tournaments is to find appropriate historic parallels for every game. Holland made it easy for me with a destruction of Spain reminiscent of the 1639 annihilation of the Spanish fleet at the Battle of the Downs off the east coast of Kent: a decisive clash that ended conclusively the age of Spanish naval hegemony. I was looking for an England performance against Italy akin to Boudicca’s rout of the IX Legion.

Greg Dyke was right with that throat-slitting gesture, when England’s world cup group was announced. Seeing the quality in some of the other groups gives you an indication of how much harder we have it. Which isn’t to say we’d have breezed through, mind. But I suspect we would have beaten Russia and South Korea, who played like two mid table Championship sides. Which is pretty much what the Koreans are, really. Incidentally, my wife remarked of the Koreans, as the teams lined up, “they’re not lookers, are they?” So: tomorrow. What do we do with Mr Potato Head? Put him in the centre or leave him out altogether? I’m tending towards the latter, given his fairly awful performance against Italy.

So – Nigeria versus Iran, then. I wonder who Boko Haram were cheering for, surrounded by their infidel abductees in some sand-blown, bilharzia riven hellhole. I was cheering for our new allies, Iran. We are told every year – since about 1986 – that African teams will take world football by storm. And they never do. They’re as useless as were Zaire in 1974. But that won’t stop the BBC spending our licence fee money on the African Cup of Nations, for political reasons. And then earlier, an enormous pleasure to watch Portugal’s pouting moppets, each of them seemingly named after a seaside donkey, thoroughly thrashed by good ol’ dependable Germany.

It takes quite a lot for me to feel even mildly sympathetic towards the French, but they had my support against the semi-reformed death squad of Honduras. One should not put too much store by the character of a country’s football team – but watching the way in which the Central Americans set about France, much as they had previously set about England, it did not wholly surprise one that the benighted mosquito-ravaged country has the highest murder rate in the world. Yes, including Iraq. Its murder rate is not far off double the next contenders (all of whom come from the Caribbean, natch). I’m writing this before Argentina’s game against Bosnia and Herzegovina; I don’t think I could bear to contemplate the Argies and the French winning on the same day.

You see – that’s the trouble. You write off the World Cup for moral reasons because of FIFA sleaze (and that opening game). And then Spain are magnificently humiliated, cheering me up more than I could have thought possible. Undoubtedly talented, Spain have nonetheless been boring us rigid for too long, with that self-regarding, tippy tappy, stifling of what the game should really be about. The Netherlands taught them that, with great glee. I haven’t been so pleased about a world cup result for ages – well, not since the French fell to bits against Mexico and South Africa. You sort of hope this is the end of an era, or the beginning of the end of an era. We must now get behind Chile and hope they can take at least a point form the Spanish.

I’d like to say that when I’m low and feel I can’t go on anymore that it’s the thought of a child’s smile or a better future for humanity that gets me through, or maybe one of those inspiring Maya Angelou quotes people were sharing last week: but to be honest, it’s actually that picture of Ed Miliband trying to eat a bacon sandwich. I know that certain Labour commentators are unhappy with Ed’s performance, and many Tories are concerned about him actually running the country, but his visual mishaps do provide such cheer during these dark periods. A friend of mine brought a copy of the bacon picture to his 83-year-old father in hospital, who had suffered a stroke, and said his dad laughed so much he almost had another one.