Last night, before the kick-off, I received an email from the letters dude at the Evening Standard, asking me to send a letter about the football, whatever the result. Like what am I: ‘letters-R-us’?? But that’s the way it works. You ask for letters and make it appear like they’re the spontaneous outpourings of a nation (London is a nation, isn’t it?) in the ecstasy of victory/desperation of loss.

I thought it would be appropriate to watch the match first and that turned out to be my first mistake. Should have gone to Tai Chi. Where there’s no Luis Suarez, and if there was you could inflict pain and suffering on him. As he deserves. Anyway, I sent the Standard 2 letters, which reflect my deepest feelings of sadness, of loss, of frustration and of course, of fucking inevitability. And I shall share these with you:

1.
England can still win the World Cup. Its simple maths. We need Italy to beat Costa Rica tonight. We need to then beat Costa Rica next week by a goal difference equal to the number of the moons of Saturn. We need gravity to be suspended for just long enough for all the other teams to fall off. Then a plague of locusts to descend upon Rio; maybe one or two significant earthquakes, and then a few points deducted from Italy and Uruguay for cheating.
Everything to play for; come on England

2.
I despair. Uruguay has a population one fifth that of greater London. Therefore, in London alone there should be 5 Luis Suarezes. Yet in the whole of England we can find no-one who can score sufficient goals to keep our (once) proud nation’s dreams afloat in the World Cup. Suarez had open-heart surgery four days ago. And yet he not only made sufficient recovery, against all predictions, to play against the team from where he calls home, but personally knocked us out of the World Cup, in all but some minor improbability. Yet I think we can be proud of… err… the way we… err… hmmm. There’s always Euro 2016.

What I didn’t say was that the buck-toothed Uruguayan sometime cannibal is a God. Nothing short of. And putting aside all the horribleness of yet another tournament failure, you have to just sit back and admire. And realise that, despite the obvious patriotic fraternalism that infects our nation during the World Cup, it is about football. Great football. Brilliant football. Unfortunately none of it is ours, but as an exhibition of the beautiful game this tournament has been magnificent. Even with Alex Song’s wonderful elbow-in-the-back and Beni Assout-Ekotto head-butting a team-mate (what is it about Cameroon? they should come to Tai Chi; they’re wasted at football) this has been a fantastic display of wonders. And none greater than tiny Uruguay last night. Two incredible goals. One a superb team effort with an almost unbelievable finish by Luis, and the second simply all about that man.

So now, as always, we must simply turn off the pseudo-nationalistic bollox and enjoy the splendour.

I’m still depressed.

Happy Friday

Angry of NW11
xxxx