Fitba Hell

ENGLANDITIS has spread north of the border. This is a virulent condition, whose sufferers are prone to highly contagious bouts of self-glorification and an abnormal obsession with young men's toes. Even The Herald's famously erudite and measured scribe, Graham Spiers, has succumbed. Sven-Goran Eriksson, wrote Spiers this week (even before hearing of Wayne Rooney's apparent miracle recovery), "is beginning to resemble the mysterious Scandinavian alchemist that many have supected him of being all along. Suddenly, Eriksson's England seem to have a genuine chance of winning the World Cup on July 9."

His evidence for this sudden belief that England will prevail? Other than a 6-0 win over a poor and unfocused Jamaica side, only the fact that Eriksson has been seen to "purr with delight about his team's preparation". And that's it.

Come hame Graham, ye're nae weel.

SOMETHING had been nagging at me for a while. My senses had been inundated for weeks with news on the state of a young man’s toe, the hand towels at England’s hotel, and whether Erkisson’s crinkly smiles at press conferences were a portent of good fortune. Then I suddenly realised: amid all this suffocating hype, I’d heard almost nothing about England’s opponents. Paraguay remain a band of shadowy unknowns. How many of their number can you name? Bayern Munich bit-part player Roque Santa Cruz? The Keith Moon of goalkeepers, Jose Luis Chilavert? (Doesn’t count – he’s not playing anymore).

England fans should hope that the media’s obsession with the achingly banal minutiae of their own team’s preparation is not matched by Eriksson and his troops. “Know your enemy” counselled the ancient Chinese warrior Sun Tzu. Bizarrely, for a country whose media and fans revel in their military past whenever an international football tournament comes around (“Achtung!” bellows the newspaper, “What’s it like to lose a war?” sing the fans), this maxim of warfare does not seem to apply.

Eriksson, England fans must hope, will be better prepared. If his attitude to opponents is closer to The Super Soaraway Sun than Sun Tzu, a nasty surprise may lie in wait come Saturday.

SWITCH to Talksport on your digital radio just now and you might just hear a sheepish-sounding Paula Radcliffe. Paula reads from a script and advises us to listen to Talksport and hear England win the World Cup. Her hesitancy is understandable – she’s not given to such hubris. She may be far and away the world’s best marathon runner, but before each race she is at pains to make respectful noises about the quality of her opponents.

Radcliffe is ill at ease with the braying triumphalism that England’s football team stirs up. It’s all around just now: Tony Christie crooning about “cruising the group games”; Jimmy Pursey rasping that “We’re gonna win the cup.” On ITV last night, World Cup Heaven and Hell was an excuse to chuck in gratuitous insults about the World Cup hosts. According to one gurning contributor, we’d all love to spit on a German. Last November, England fans warmed up for their trip to Germany by taunting supporters of another historical rival, Argentina, with refrains of “What’s it like to lose a war?” On Wednesday, they had little historical enmity to use as an excuse, but still decided to drown out the Hungarian national anthem with a chorus of boos.

Most English sportsmen and women aren’t laden down with this sort of baggage, so it doesn’t stick in my craw to see Paula Radcliffe, Andrew Flintoff or Tim Henman do well. Football, though, is different. Gordon Brown may find it politically expedient to jump on England’s World Cup bandwagon, but he should question the jingoism that fuels it. Brown’s platitudes about pan-UK togetherness imply that Scots support England’s opponents because of inveterate xenophobia. It’s precisely because I don't care for inveterate xenophobia that I’ll become an honorary Paraguayan on June 10.