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It’s a fact of life that anyone who likes football has A World Cup, a specific tournament to cling on to and claim as their own.  It’s usually the first World Cup you can remember, and every World Cup ever after will always lack the je ne sais quoi that made your World Cup so special.

My World Cup was Italia 90.  I was nine, and remember watching every England game with my parents.  I remember going apeshit when David Platt scored against Belgium, being confused when Gazza started crying, and wondering why Peter Shilton couldn’t have stretched just a little bit more to stop Andreas Brehme’s cruelly deflected free kick.  I remember England scraping through against Egypt and Cameroon, but not fully understanding how poor we’d been until years later.  My abiding memory of Italia 90 is Sir Bobby Robson (God rest his soul) in an interview years later mournfully saying, “We should have won that World Cup.”  You just knew he was haunted by that regret until the day he died.

After England failed to qualify for the farce that was USA 94, my next World Cup memory is of France 98.  I remember this one much more clearly, watching all the England games in bars and pubs in Nottingham.  I remember the locals in The Pelican in Bilborough throwing bottles at us during the Tunisia game.  I remember eating an entire tube of someone else’s Pringles in the Hilton (bizarrely) during the defeat to Romania, whilst trying to get off with some girl called Gemma (which was going well until Dan Petrescu’s last minute winner, when I drifted into a bizarre mood of put-on-for-effect melancholy and she left).

I remember the Argentina game; RKO’s playing “It’s Raining Men” over the top of the Argentine national anthem to much merriment, Michael Owen’s goal, Michael Owen’s dive, David Beckham’s ‘kick’, Sol Campbell’s disallowed goal, the predictable agony of penalties.  After David Batty’s penalty was saved I stood up in silence and walked out, eventually sitting alone outside on a wall in a show of mock-grief.  You see, I didn’t really care that much.  It was annoying, yes, and I was pissed off that our World Cup was over, but I really didn’t get the whole grown men crying and/or fighting in the street and/or smashing up public property thing.  I felt I should care a bit more, so I pretended.

I put on my melancholy act again (I didn’t speak at all until a couple of hours later when I turned to the two girls me and my mate were with and suggested they come and stay at my house; a beyond-disastrous plan which resulted in a massive bollocking from my parents, who, embarrassingly, were sat up waiting — “worried” — when I strolled in at half past one on a school night with two girls).

The 2002 World Cup was great, mainly because the games were on between 7:30am and lunchtime, and I was in my student placement year.  As soon as the fixtures were announced I booked time off for every England game.  For the 7:30am kick-offs I remember picking my mates up and getting to the Rifleman’s Arms in Belper for 6am, when we immediately set about drinking the place dry.  The day we beat Argentina was a quite epic and very drunken day.

The Denmark (first knockout) game was on a Saturday, and those who’ve been paying attention will know that summer Saturdays = cricket.  We asked the league if we could move our cricket game forward so we could have a two hour break in between innings to watch the game.  The league declined our request.  We watched England romp to a 3-0 lead at half time, then went and bowled Selston out for 35 (Ben Tait took 8 wickets for 9 runs) before knocking them off and having beer with tea at about 4 o’clock.  A great day.

Then there was the limp defeat to Brazil, and the number-of-years-of-hurt-people-like-to-refer-to went up by four.

I don’t remember a great deal about the 2006 World Cup, which makes me think it wasn’t very good.  I remember England’s opening game being on a Saturday afternoon, and this time our cricket league allowing us to start early.  We started our game against Allestree at about 10:30.  I got 7 wickets, we watched a fairly poor England victory during an extended tea break and then went out and won the game.  I remember watching the Ecuador game in a pub in Headingley before going on to get hideously drunk watching The Who.  I remember the Portugal game being on a Saturday but for some reason we didn’t move our cricket game forward.  Still we managed to coincide a drinks break with the disappointment of another penalty shoot-out defeat. 

I remember coming over all Gallic when Zinedine Zidane went completely batshit fucking mental and headbutted Marco Materazzi.  I remember whatshername saying at the time, “Well that’s just ruined it for me.  I wanted France to win, but not anymore.  Not after that.”  (I was quite the opposite.)  I had France in the office sweepstake, and the next day I wrote a strongly worded e-mail to Zizou’s official website saying that his recklessness had cost me fifteen pounds of winnings and I’d be grateful if he could send me the equivalent amount in sterling or Euros.  Inexplicably I heard nothing back.

Which brings us to 2010.  And, I hate to admit it, but I really hope England don’t lift The World Cup in three week’s time.  That’s the first time I’ve ever thought that, but my reasons are fairly sound.  I went to Edinburgh last week for a wedding, and in a vain attempt to ingratiate myself with the locals, I made a couple of gags about them hating the English and wanting anyone to win but us.  Almost without exception they corrected me: “We don’t hate the English,” they said, “we hate the English media.”  And you know, I think I do too.  I was bored of this World Cup before it even started, what with every newspaper ramming it down my throat since February, and the constant news coverage, and the predictable, “We’ll never get a better chance…” bullshit the idiot pundits spew out every four years.

A prime example: we’re constantly told that the English Premier League is “the best league in the world.”  Cesc Febregas and Fernando Torres are two of the very best players in “the best league in the world” (just try and tell me they wouldn’t be in your Premier League XI) and yet they were both sat on the bench for Spain last night.  You see, there’s saying you’re the best in the world and then there’s actually doing something to prove that you’re the best in the world.  The best don’t need to tell you they’re the best.  They just fucking are.

Just imagine, try hard to imagine, the God-awful hysteria this once-great country would descend into if England won the World Cup.  It would be unbearable.  It was bad enough when we won the Ashes, and hardly anyone really cared about that.  Just imagine the arrogance.  Imagine the St George’s flags on cars and hanging out of bedroom windows for another four years.  Imagine shirtless chavs showing off their ‘World Cup Winners 2010 England Til I Die’ tattoos.  But more than anything, imagine — just fucking imagine how fucking terrible this would be — go on and imagine Glen Johnson getting a fucking Knighthood.  Imagine that.  Do you want that?  DO YOU?  No you fucking don’t.

So I’ll cheer on England for however long it is before we crash out of the World Cup.  I want England to do well; I really, really do.  But the older I get the more I think that the England squad is the epitome of everything wrong with football, the “working man’s game” played by men trousering £150,000 a week.