Germany calling
FRANK KEATING
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 sixmonths’ distance my dosh would be on Brazil, Argentina, Italy and hosts Germany to make the semi-finals — with an added halfhearted 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.’ I daresay, anyway, that the English hoolies will grab far more headlines in Germany than Master Rooney and the lads. Before Christmas the police announced a new batch of 1,000 suspected bovver-boys had been banned from travelling — but admitted at the same time that 500 known hooligans were suddenly off the list because their banning orders had lapsed, and if they continued to lie low, there was nothing to stop them joining Ingerland’s midsummer invasion across the Rhine. So that’s all right then.
A few other New Year wagers? In spite of the builders’ desperately perspiring optimism, Wembley will not be ready to stage, as promised, the FA Cup final in May. Spared of a hectic European Cup campaign, Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United will steadily and calmly reel in the Premiership’s overworked, fixture-congested likes of Chelsea and Liverpool — and with the title ensured the tetchy tartan knight will depart on a high. At rugby union, how about the England coach Robinson resigning in a grump after the two surprise packets of the Six Nations turn out to be Scotland and Italy? For England’s cricketers, the tour to India which begins at the end of February sounds overture to a frantic year. They play all of seven summer Tests and, of course, the accompanying flurry of pointless one-dayers against Sri Lanka and Pakistan, followed at once by the ersatz ICC Champions’ Trophy contrivance, which ends on Guy Fawkes night. Before the World Cup in the Caribbean in March 2007, there is the little matter of a clamorous jam-packed winter’s tour to Australia. A final bet for 2006? Australia to win back the Ashes. It’s as if 2005 never happened.
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