Germany calling

No mistaking the centre of sport’s universe in 2006. Found the flags of St George in the loft? Ordered the white van on which to display them? Ingerland! Ingerland! Ingerland! ’Ere-we-go! ’Ere-we-go! ’Ere-we-go! June will be busting out all over with World Cup football. Forty years on, England genuinely fancy their chances of regaining the trophy and the relentless national optimism will have reached bursting point by kick-off night against Paraguay in Frankfurt on 10 June. When the final in Berlin on 9 July does not involve England, the wailing post-mortem grief will fill the second half of the year. England might be fielding its youngest World Cup squad, and even possibly its brightest, but the crucial strength and experience in depth is woefully lacking for such a compressed and pressured tournament: as a previous flop of a defeated manager nicely phrased it a dozen years ago: ‘Do I not like that?’ If this time the spine of the team on which England’s inscrutable Swedish manager is wholly reliant — defender Terry, midfielders Gerrard and Lampard, and the forward prodigy Rooney — were to slip a disc or two, then the side would at once look a hobbling hotchpotch of ordinariness.

If I was a serious betting man, from this six-months’ distance my dosh would be on Brazil, Argentina, Italy and hosts Germany to make the semi-finals — with an added half-hearted flutter on one of Holland, France, Tunisia and, OK, England, just possibly causing an upset. We shall see what we shall see. Forty New Years ago, when dear old Alf Ramsey’s Dagenham dulcets gravely enunciated, ‘England will win the World Cup this summer’, the nation chortled merrily at his ridiculous cheek. When Eriksson forecast precisely the same the other day, all England nodded sagely and said, ‘The Swede’s dead right, no probs.