It seems fitting that today's match between Ukraine and England is only available on the internet. Having already qualified for the World Cup the English are free to regard remaining events in Group Six with a sneer of aristocratic indifference, the kind of sneer worn by a notably bastardish gadfly-squire in a Jane Austen novel who makes the mousey heroine flush at her piano for about 40 pages before abruptly swanning off to London, clearing the way for the lovelorn curate who earns a reasonable living.
Because, let's face it, the internet is still the place where things that don't really matter happen, or things that only really matter on the internet, where they really, really matter. This has caused some unease over whether it's entirely a good thing. And perhaps it isn't. I'm slightly bothered by the fact that the entity putting the game on is called "Premium", the kind of name usually reserved for an embarrassing brand of executive condom that comes in a quilted black packet with a picture of a galloping horse on it. Then there's the prospect of Sven-Goran Eriksson as a studio guest, a man whose presence now acts as a kind of sensory warning signal that something somewhere is deeply wrong, the football equivalent of a damp smell in the basement or shooting pains in your left arm.
There is also something jarring about the idea of England playing football inside your computer, although part of this is an inexpressible fear that they might somehow get lost in there among the circuit-boards and flange-resistors, like characters in a mid-80s science-fiction film trapped in a virtual nether-dimension ruled by a sinister being called The Megadominator, played by David Bowie in a shiny hat.
But we shouldn't really be alarmed by any of this. It is, after all, a natural progression. The English invented international football, the English helped invent the internet, and the English invented the idea of football as a largely soulless revenue-generating engine. Hardly surprising, then, that the English should also invent international football available only on the internet as a soulless means of generating revenue.
The real problem is that history suggests it's only matter of time before the Dutch or the Brazilians come along and start doing the whole thing a lot better. With this in mind, I would suggest a few improvements to the blueprint. Nothing juvenile, like offering UK users a chance to "hack into" Ukraine's full-back Vyacheslav Shevchuk and enjoy his rising confusion as he repeatedly shouts "I have a vagina" into the TV camera lens while taking a throw-in near the halfway line.
Just simple stuff like being able to choose your own match background. Personally, I'd like to see Ukraine v England played out against the backdrop of market day in a thriving 18th century Dorset town buzzing with excitement because Mayor Fallowfield has announced his intention to defy the squire over his proposed corn levy.
At the very least I'd like to be able to click on Carlton Cole and enjoy the entire match from inside his head, listening to his iPod, doing some sideways-jumping warm-ups, texting Kieron Dyer on the bus to the airport, and then following him home and remaining Carlton Cole until he finally dies aged 113 in the medical wing of Carlton Cole Tower in Abu Dhabi, surrounded by loyal family retainers.
Premium could at least do something about its billing. "International football: England v Ukraine" just won't bring the web trade in. If it is reading this I suggest an immediate rebranding to "International medieval role play: Stephen Fry nude pics v Live nude Romanian netball girls". Take that, old analogue "real" world, with your decades of increasingly sidelined international underachievement.
