Whoever and wherever you are, there’s no escaping this next month of football. Love it or hate it — it’s here! And to be fair, it only comes round once every four years ... then every two years in between there’s the European Cup ... and every year there’s the league from September through to May or June. OK, to be fair, if you don’t like football, you’d better make the most of the two summers you have off in every four years.

The World Cup conjures up different feelings and emotions for everyone. My dad, heading towards his sixties, would be thinking “George Best” if he were a football fan. But he’s not — unless we never caught him sneaking away to watch a sly game on the set in the back bedroom. My first recollection of a World Cup was Maradonna’s “Hand of God”, which more or less seems to have set the scene for us to have a good moan every four years about how much we were robbed. I’m at a loss to know what the younger generation thinks about the game. They’ll assume it was invented in Brazil or Africa — after all, that’s where all the best players seem to come from (if not the best looking).

This year looks like we’ve got a good excuse to be worried. Aside from the British stars having the summer off with sick notes, the line-up doesn’t look that bright. If we win our group, we’ll hope that Germany win theirs, which will give us a break in the first round of play-offs. After that, the quarter finals could be with Argentina, Holland, Portugal or Mexico. If we get through that, it looks like Brazil or Holland in the semis, and any one of the above for the finals. That’s our good route to win. But, we could come out as runner-up in our group and will have to add Germany, the host team, to the beginning of the equation. Or we could be really unlucky, win our group, Germany come in as ‘runners up’, and we’d still have the same situation on our hands. We’ve already got plenty of excuses prepared for that fateful game, we’ll be watching the ref like a hawk, we’ll see every penalty that wasn’t whistled (in our favour, of course) and we’ll be screaming that that goal was off-side. It’s not deja-vu, it’s probability.

But would it be improbable to assume we win our group? Would it be improbable to think that we could have our first knock-out against Poland and walk through the game? Would it be improbable to think that we could take out Argentina or Mexico in the quarter finals, followed by Brazil or France in the Semis? And would it be totally unthinkable to see an England final in Berlin on June 9th against a German home crowd?

Of course it’s unlikely — just check the odds online and you’ll think twice about putting big money on it. But even so, it’s only seven games, and who knows, Sven’s new ace up his sleeve might work.

If Theo doesn’t do for 2006 what Owen did for 2002, then maybe his girlfriend will prove enough of a distraction to take another British footballing disaster out of the spotlight. If all else fails, just remember... we won the ashes!