Two things I learned yesterday, when England opened their World Cup campaign;

1) I've got more chance of growing a 36" golden cock that spits diamonds than England have of winning the World Cup

2) If I carry on the way I'm going on the drinking front, I shall be dead by the time the Second Round kicks in.

3) A wise American once said "a drawn game is like kissing your sister". He was talking out his arse. It's actually like getting the top of your head sucked by a skinhead who has been in prison.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me take you back, dear reader, to Sunday morn at 9am. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and all that other bollocks that I'm not particularly fussed about, as I'm in a darkened pub watching Paraguay v South Africa, and thinking how positively un-English it all is. I thought I was in Amsterdam, and nearly asked the barmaid for some drugs and how much it would cost to get her to fire bananas out of her flange.

Day 6:

SVEN HASSLE

June 3rd 2002

But as I reclined, dark thoughts troubled my mind. You see, the first few days of the World Cup are an absolute joy - a veritable orgy of footy and hype that you can just sit back and enjoy. And then England play their first game and you think, oh shit - are we gonna cock it up again? Are we going to make cunts of ourselves and fall flat on our arses, or are we going to actually get ourselves sorted this time?

Supporting England, you see, is an absolute bitch of a job, and the baggage that comes with it is Alyaah's luggage compartment-size in its lumbering encumberence. Firstly, we invented the damn sport. Secondly, we still have this laughable idea that we're still a world power - in football and everything else. Our more cuntier members of the population like punching each other in the face and singing anti-IRA songs in their leisure time, and the rest of the world seems to love it when we balls it up. Having said that, it's the Motherland (mine, in any case), the whole country stops walking around with faces like smacked arses when we do well, and we're pretty much owed it, if you ask me.

What's more, England are actually on the verge of becoming very decent indeed. No, seriously. After the last World Cup, then-manager Glenn Hoddle dropped himself into a world of shit when he spouted his opinions about the afterlife (he's a born-again Christian who used to employ a spirit healer called Eileen Drewery), and pointed out that disabled people were paying the price for being bastards in a previous life. As you can imagine, this didn't go down well at all and he got sacked. Having bonkers ideas about spiritually isn't a new thing for footballers - world-class mentalist David Icke, who believes that the Queen Mother was a shape-changing lizard who secretly ruled the entire world with other Reptillians such as George Bush's Dad, used to play in goal for Coventry - but what really did for him was when it was revealled that he used to have Kenny G records in the background when he told certain players they were dropped from the squad.

It was obvious that England needed a drastic change of leadership. A man with a vision who could overturn the moribund structure and drag the team into the 21st Century.

So they picked Kevin Keegan.

Now Kev is known for many things. One of the top footballers in Europe in the 70s, he excerted such influence that when he was transferred to SV Hamburg in 1978, his Starsky-like 'fro became the most widely-imitated haircut in Germany, as it still is today. As a manager, he developed a reputation for all-out attacking football that somehow forgot that you had to defend as well. He would march into a lower-division club awash with cash, come on like a tracksuited messiah, bring them into the Premiership, and then piss off when things got bad. It nearly worked at Newcastle, when they ran Man U all the way to the wire one season. Everyone remembers seeing him melt down after a game when Man U boss Alex Ferguson accused other clubs of giving Newcastle an easy ride. "I would LOVE it - just LOVE it - if we BEAT them!" he squeaked.

Anyway, he lead us through a complete dog's arse of a Euro 2000 campaign where we were made to look like twats against Portugal and Romania, and when we lost 2-1 to Germany at Wembley the following autumn, he fucked off, thank God.

This time, England has such a shortage of decent managers, it was suggested that maybe we should get - gasp! - a foreigner who, y'know, actually knew about the game and had won a few things - and when Lazio manager Sven Goran Eriksson was mentioned, some of the papers got into a right froth. But he took the job, and shocked everybody with his attitude. Instead of coming on like Lord Kitchener and talking England up ("Oh, he's definately someone you want in the trenches with you"), he pointed out, quite correctly, that we weren't good enough to win the World Cup just yet and that this one was simply a marker for future glories. And in any case, we still had to qualify, being stuck behind Germany in the group.

And then, amazingly, we went to Munich and spanked Germany 5-1. Five fucking One! I remember sitting in Fat Dave's house, staring at the scoreboard on the telly and screaming "Look! At! THAT! You will NEVER! See! Anything like THAT! AGAIN!"

And even though we were dead jammy to win the group (David Beckham scoring with a free kick in the last seconds of the last game against Greece), we started to think we could go all the way again. Agh.

The really great thing about Sven is how calm he is. He doesn't bellow "CAN WE NOT KNOCK IT?" or "DO I NOT LIKE THAT?" as Graham Taylor used to. He doesn't cuss cripples like Glennda did. Nor do you see him slumped over an advertising hoarding as Kev did. You can't see him throwing an entire tray of teacups against the wall at half time, or trying to gee up the players by calling them a 'useless bunch of puffs'. His unflappable manner is demonstrated in a Sainsburys advert where he has to put up with the biggest cunt in the UK, Jamie Oliver, pretending to be a Cockney barrow boy - and not once does he attempt to run a bread knife through the annoying fish-lipped wanker's head. That takes willpower. Also, he encapsulates the average Englishperson's secret desire to shake off the image of us as fat beer-swilling morons in Union Jack shorts and finally become part of Europe. He's even got his own classical music compilation album.

You can just see that the papers are desperate to put the boot in, as they do with every England manager, but on the one occasion that he did fuck up - he was caught knocking off a TV bird called Ulrika Jonsson - he quite reasonably pointed out that his private life had no bearing on his ability to manage England and, in the nicest possible way, told the media to stick it up their arse.

Sadly, England have been absolutely fucked over by a string of injuries, but by the time Sunday rolled along, David Beckham was playing, and seemed all good. We're in a horrible group, but a win against Sweden would have virtually put us in the catbird seat for the next round, and seeing that Argentina weren't particularly all that against Nigeria, we could go on to stuff them on Friday and we'd go on to beat everyone to win the World Cup and they're be an enormous piss-up and it'd be like VE Day all over again. Hurrah!

So, I'm standing outside another pub at 10am, waiting for it to open with a few dozen others. "Fucking hell," I said to an old bloke standing behind me. "I bet it must be a great time to be alive if you're an alcoholic, eh?"

"Yeah, it is. When's the pub opening?" he replied. Then he gave me a five-minute lecture about his 11-step programme, having eliminated the one about believing in a 'higher power' because "God's a right bastard". Jesus, he was an alcoholic and he thought I was taking the piss! I stood there for another two minutes feling me ears going redder and redder and waiting for him to smack me, but then he got sick of waiting and told me he had a few cans of Kestrel in his bag and he was gonna neck 'em at the bus stop. Phew.

By the time the doors open, I was appalled by the shitty turnout. The pubs are usually packed out for big games, but it's Jubilee weekend and everyone seemed to have fucked off out of town to avoid it. Damn. By the time the game starts, it doesn't feel right. People are actually looking around nervously before they shout at the screen (if you ever want to imitate the average England fan, just jerk your neck violently and bark "GOOOORRRRRN!" like you're vomiting your entire digestive system. It's easy!). I had an entire table to myself, as I awaited the arrival of assorted girly friends who weren't going to barbecues or to the seaside or any of that shit and laughed at footballers singing their national anthems very badly indeed.

Right from the off, England are running things. They're all over Sweden, Beckham is kicking the ball without screaming in agony, my friends have arrived, I'm on me third pint and life is wonderful. Never mind that the atmosphere is as flat as a witch's tit and it still doesn't feel like the World Cup has already started, and there's a huge skinhead in a lime green polyester top who stops barking at the telly every now and then to turn round and stare at me...

And then - oh, this is lovely - Beckham curls in a perfect corner, Sol Campbell surges forward and heads it into the net. Well deserved it was, too - he was the one who had a goal disallowed in the dying minutes of the Argentina game in '98. Get in, you fucker! I stand bolt upright, pushing my chair over, which hits the table behind me and spills an entire round of drinks. Oops.

But it's too late to turn back. I get into full Bellow mode. Well, you just have to, don't you? What other opportunities in life to you have to scream and whoop like a gibbon in a porn film on a Sunday morning? Me and the Lime Green Skinhead go at it big style, and a Scouser chips in every now and then. "CARM ORN, ENGLARRRRRND! FAKKIN' 'ELL!" By half-time, we're well on top and I get in Pint Number Four. This is ace.

Sadly, and unbeknownst to my good self, England must have been spending the interval smoking skunk, running about hitting each other with lump hammers, or having sex. Because when the second half kicked off, they looked absolutely knackered and started playing like twats. Even worse, they started playing the long-ball game, which involves tonking the ball like the LAPD did to Rodney King and hoping someone can get to it. It's horrible to watch, particularly when the whole point of Sven being manager was to eradicate this scab upon the face of footy.

When the equaliser inevitably comes - Danny Mills lumbers about like a baby giraffe, coughs up the ball to Alexandersson, 1-1 - I slump back down in my chair, utterly fucked off with it all. Once again, England have choked upon the nicotine-stained fingers of massive expectation and have vomited up another shitty performance. There is no way back into the game, Sweden are all over us like a Christmas jumper knitted by your auntie, and only David Seaman is the only one who seems awake. Oft-criticised for being too old to play for England and having a ponytail, he pulled off two vital saves.

Final whistle. 1-1. Rat's cocks.

"Come on, there's an Ikea in Croydon - let's trash the fucker"

The rest of the day is a blur, as it deteriorated into a 15-hour drinking session. All I can really remember is getting into a conversation with the Lime Green Skinhead after the game. "Fworrr dear, mate - I really liked the way you got into the game, shaatin' for England and all that" he said. "Yeah, well," I replied, trying to back away as subtly as possible. "You've got to, haven't you?

"Fakkin' hell, It's good to see people like you standing up for England" he brayed. Oh shit, I thought - I know where this is going. He's about to start banging on about 'nig-nogs' and 'Pakis' coming over here and taking all our jobs, and he'll try and recruit me into the BNP and...hang on a minute...

"Er, what do you mean, people like me?"

"Well, you ARE Gay, aren't you?"

Shitting hell.

"What makes you think that, mate?"

"Well," he said, leaning over "You've got a skinhead, you're with all them birds, and you haven't looked at their tits once"

Jesus, I get this all the time. What with shaving me head and the poncey specs I wear, I've accidently started looking like a Gay football hooligan. All me school mates that I met up with for drinks every now and then because I don't behave like an orangutan on steroids whenever a girl half my age walks by in a pub. It's - or want of a better word - an arseache.

"No, mate, I'm not Gay" and then he leaned over and dropped the bomb on me. "I was in prison for ten years, you know..."

Eek.

It was then that he started licking the side of me head. I froze. On one hand, I could tell him to fuck off, but on the other, he would have probably beaten the shit out of me. My eyes cast wildly about, trying to attact the attention of my mates. They saw me. They stared agape. Then they pissed themselves laughing.

And then - fucking hell, I'm trembling even now as I type this - he tried to give my head a love bite. I could actually feel his teeth scraping against me head. Later, when I had broken away, managed to get over to another pub and watched Spain v Slovenia, I learned from his mate that he'd got so pissed off about something, he'd punched in a car windscreen. Oh my God. England are shit, we've got to avoid defeat against Argentina on Friday or we're as good as out, and a man twice my size wants me for a prison bitch.

Today I have been mainly trying to watch Italy and Brazil playing proper football on a telly the size of a matchbox, cringing at the fireworks that have been setting off the hangover that refuses to go away. Tomorrow, I shall be having to leave town to watch a friend roast a pig, so when I get back, I'll tell you as to why Argentina-England is such a evil game, and more of the usual football flange.