ALL ABOARD!
In the summer of 2006, as England blundered inexorably through the early stages of the World Cup, Team Fiver made a pact. Should England reach the final, we would spend the entirety of the match going round and round the Circle Line on the London Underground. The train would be totally empty, with the entire country watching the game, allowing us to solemnly quaff cans of Super Tin while praying there would eventually be a slow, weary procession of the glum and the heartbroken, impotent tears slowly moistening the Union Jack paint plastered across their beetroot phizogs. If the opposite happened, and we heard the kind of lusty cheering that could only signal the start of the apocalypse; well, we had the emergency Derringer for that.
We didn’t particularly mind the England team, but the typhoon of witless presumption that surrounded them was too much to bear. That summer was the apex of English football’s Halfwit Years, when all the Golden Generation had to do was turn up, kick Johnny Foreigner up the trousers and lift the trophy – a plan that was foolproof until they were taken to penalties by Portugal in the quarter-finals.
The culture was very hard not to dislike. The Fiver, admittedly, went a bit far with the Union Jack Andrex incident, but we won’t apologise for youthful exuberance. Besides, things have changed since then. In recent times The Fiver has had to wrestle with the most confusing sensations since we were blindsided by puberty. If you tell anyone this, you’re dead … but we kind of want England to do well this summer. Any residual arrogance in the coverage of England is more than leavened by the kind of self-awareness and self-deprecation previously reserved for the England cricket team. The football team has created something new, a likeable kind of gallows hubris.
Rather than entering the tournament as certain winners, England go to Russia with the more dignified status of useful outsiders. They have one or two weak points (in goal, in defence, in midfield) but they also have some of the world’s better young players. Harry Kane is the first man to score 1,000 goals in a season, and a youthful core of the team will have benefitted enormously from the Premier League’s galacticoach era. Marcus Rashford is good, too. Nobody really thinks they are going to change the world, but at least they are trying to make it a more interesting place. Their style is the most sophisticated since Terry Venables was in charge, and there is so much to like about Gareth Southgate – not least his utter disdain for the Foreign Secretary he dare not name.
It’s always unwise to project too far ahead when a tournament draw is made, so that’s exactly what we’re going to do. The best England can probably hope for is to lose a quarter-final to Brazil or Germany. That’s OK. It’s not how you lose, it’s the way that you lose it. Football tournaments have a habit of turning goodwill into murderous hatred. But if England play good football; if the country doesn’t get woefully carried away with a 3-0 win over Panama; and if they don’t lose to Iceland, this could be England’s most enjoyable World Cup campaign for a long time. And The Fiver might not need to seek sanctuary on the Circle Line.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK
“It’s about the road more than the arrival. If it were just about the World Cup, I would take a plane. It is a great chance for me to see new things” – Egypt fan Mohamed Nufal on deciding to cycle from Cairo to Russia for the finals.
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FIVEЯ LETTERS
“When you talk about Héctor Cúper working wonders ‘of Chris Coleman proportions’ (last week’s World Cup Fiver), I hope for Egypt’s sake you mean when he was Wales manager” – Jim Hearson.
“Ah, so there in last week’s World Cup Fiver was an El Hadji Diouf reference. It gives one pause to realise that some great players and most very good players become the lost morning mist of shadow memory … but if you’re a complete eejit you achieve immortality” – Hubert O’Hearn.
“FAO John Stainton (last week’s World Cup Fiver letters). I’m sure there will be lots of tech whizz types explaining the keyboard shortcut for ‘Я’, but clearly the easiest way is just to copy and paste it from the email. Hopefully my computer won’t explode when I hit ‘send’ now” – Dan Makeham.
“In last week’s FiveЯ you had a caption of Fabio Capello with the Three Lions which read: ‘Fabio Capello with England at the 2008 World Cup. Which went well.’ I should hope so, considering I don’t know too many other countries who were participating in the 2008 World Cup. Most of the key European nations I think were at the Euros. But don’t worry about the error, you were probably hacked” – Jonathan Penney (and others).
• Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com with “The FiveЯ” in the subject line. Or just “World Cup Fiver” if that’s easier. And if you’ve nothing better to do you can also tweet The Fiver.
THE RECAP
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BITS AND BOBS
Brazilian Football Confederation suits have partnered with a data firm for the World Cup. This will enable it to track players’ performances during practice sessions and matches; imagine how good they’d have been had such technology existed to chart the fearsome workrates of Socrates and Romário.
In just a few weeks’ time, Gareth Southgate will have to finalise his squad. Luckily, help is on hand from none other than … Tony Cottee! He reckons Southgate should “think carefully about Jonjo Shelvey”, who “deserves to have a chance of getting on that plane”.
Tunisia will be without star player Youssef Msakni in Russia after he sustained knee-gah!
China have become the first side to qualify for the 2019 Women’s World Cup. The Steel Roses clinched their spot in France by beating the Philippines at the Asian Cup, reaching the semi-finals at the same time.
And Sepp Blatter is back in the news, baby, announcing that the plan to use VAR in Russia is “not very clever”. As opposed to …
STILL WANT MORE?
Next in our stunning moments series: the Hand of God.
What awaits England fans in Russia. Our man in Moscow reports.
It’s your boy, David Squires, on the flamin’ new Australia kit.
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