World Cup Day Twenty Five

And so it came to pass, the final, the World Cup final, game 64 in a run that began back when football's complicity in Operation Puerto hadn't been covered up by those loveable rogues at FIFA. What an occasion to reach the 100th entry into the Meat Clinic, Buckinghamshire's only online butcher & flesh emporium.

I can remember the 1986 game, coming back from a school trip from Derbyshire, the driver ranting about Argies and how his brother-in-law had been left to bleed at Goose Green. That location sounded quite romantic after a weekend on a farm in the Peak District and I happily imagined him being pecked to death as a shower of deliciously large eggs fell around his prolapsing body.

Officially, that was the last good World Cup Final, since then we have all been subjected to dreary occasions where the awarding of the trophy has been a blessed relief after the drudgery of the previous couple of hours.

This time the denouement came in came on a patch of land where Hitler had once sat, blistering with rage as the non-master race ran rings in '36. Did he glance to the east as Owens fled on, pondering invasion of Poland, a torrid future dessert after gorging on the Sudetenland? I suppose what I am asking is this: do lay lines collide at the Olympic Stadium and create huge worldwide shows of violence and revenge that will live on throughout time?

The evidence suggests so, as Zinedine Zidane dropped a victoria sponge right into Materazzi's aching chest, as stunning a move as the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact back in '39. It was a glorious way to end a career, up there with the Challenger exploding and Roy Castle's tap dancing. It was a perfect example of Zidane and his 14-red card career, a consistent level of aggression quashed by his admirers in the press because he once did a backheel in a mid-table match.

The sight of him trudging past the glittering trophy as he made his way back to the dressing rooms was more evocotive than any slow motion montage mustered up by ITV or the BBC and it gave the tournament a fitting end. Beautifully violent, we worship at the alter of the rifle.

World Cup Day Twenty Four

You just have to love the third place playoff, it's the grinning cousin with funny ears of the World Cup, the black goat of the FIFA family.

The group games are the earnest younger brother who dreams of being a red-topped driver in BRISCA, while the knockout games are the older sister with a growing drug habit and shrinking breasts.

Something for everyone, deep down.

Germany tore into the Portuguese with their limited skills and Portugal rolled over with the undoubted skill but Atlantic morals. When will they learn? Anyhow, it gave the Hun a placing and a chance to wave their stain-free flag one more time in the balmy Prussian summer sky. It also allowed pundits and ponderers to proclaim once more that this tournament was so well organised and so much fun, thereby inferring that the previous World Cup in Japan/Korea was not. Deep down, that stems from lazy and unintelligent journalists being unable to cope with a different culture for six weeks.

Plus they could nip in and out of Germany on Ryanair and not miss Michelle's wedding in Sevenoaks.

Think how it must be for South American fans and writers, they have not seen a World Cup on their continent since 1978 yet they still find compliments about war-torn Europe. Stick that one, politely, up your Junta.

World Cup Day Twenty Three

There was a sense of dismay watching Portugal versus France, like being forced to choose between two serial killers to share a cell with, rotting on remand. Portugal had done the recent crime, the one that had been splashed all over the papers and had led the billing on Crimewatch UK that rainy Thursday but France were the really bad lads, they left you with a feeling not unlike stumbling out of the Ten Bells 10 minutes early and catching Jack T Ripper laying into one of them whores, autumn 1888.

What is the correct response to that sort of feeling, especially when it's the penipenultimate game, the World Cup now fading like some tatty old curtains flapping in a window looking out on a busy A-Road out of London?

You simply had to choose. And I chose France. And this is why.

1) France can dump out the Portugalese, leave them in tears and whatnot
2) France are old and no longer have a squad entirely fuelled by EPO
3) Italy will have a day's extra rest, surely they still have acces to good needles as well.
4) Surely the French cannot win their fourth international trophy. We'd be three behind and needing snookers in the few years before G14 outlaw international tournaments.

And then France won.

World Cup Day Twenty Two

It has been an upside down World Cup and a sense of disappointment at seeing the Germans crash out is just one aspect of it all. Who would have thought the sight of Jens looking teary would be so hard to stomach?

But truly it is.

That said, Italy deserved victory, just for having better hair. Conventionality in that respect can never be admired, and Klose's flat-top was never going to grace the World Cup Final.

Some have suggested that Italy winning the golden pot while their league is mired in wretched scandal would be a defeat for the game, but surely that reverse is true. What a lucky country they are when their right-wing demagogue leader has been ousted, their football association is purging corruption and their national team is contesting the World Cup Final.

I have never felt so envious.

FORZA JUSTICE.

World Cup Day Twenty One

What David Beckham should have said into the oversized FIFA microphone on Saturday afternoon:

"Most of you in this stadium are English and this, maybe in a parallel universe, should be a good thing but as usual you're reeking, you're showing the rest of the world that your sweat glands are bursting through nylon and you're waving flags, endless flags and these don't help us, they never did, not even when they were Union Jacks, back in the day.

[sobs quietly]

And who are the cunts who started booing Hargreaves, who gave you the fucking right to boo someone who has won the Champions League, who has played for one of the five biggest clubs in Europe, who are you? You buy charcoal in B&Q and I reserve the right to attack you in the street, endlessly, aimlessly, bloodily. Now you'll end this game singing his name, shamelessly, I cannot bear much more of this.

[visibly wilting]

I have to leave now, FIFA look uncomfortable and I am drained already and the game has not even begun. But one thing I have left is this, loving your nation is a good thing but loving it in like this is not. Learn your country's history, learn about the Levellers, the Diggers, the Chartists and the Jarrow Marchers and stop singing songs about 10 German Bombers, planes that were piloted by men braver than you'll ever be, stronger than you'll ever even imagine you could be.

Thankyou, here's Luis Figo."