World Cup 2010 Blog Day 1

Written by Joe Berg Monday, 07 June 2010 21:24

England World Cup Blog

Hello and welcome to the first of hopefully many blog posts from me over the next month, as England attempt to navigate their way through a World Cup wallchart of fixtures and I attempt to undegenerate-ize myself. Yes, I made that last word up; you will not find it in any dictionary.

The reason I’m here today (I mean here on this blog, not here in this Somali-run internet café that I suspect is a front for something more sinister) is because A2BWorldCup have asked me to entertain you for the next few weeks with whatever comes to mind. Personally, I don’t know how entertaining I am, but A2B seem to think that the answer is “very f**king entertaining”, so I’m going to have to accept that and just get on with it.

Before I continue, I should let you know in advance that if this post suddenly becomes quiet, maybe even ends mid-sentence, it is most probably because I’m vomiting into a toilet somewhere whilst choking on tears. The reason for this is that my rent is due tomorrow, and as I found myself £200 short I decided the most sensible solution to the problem was to bet what I did have of the rent on today’s tennis matches that I’m at this moment following on Livescore.  Oh what a life.

This comes just two days after I promised my girlfriend that I was finally, after all these years, ready to walk away from all forms of gambling and start building a newer, fresher life for myself.  Now, I knew full well when I made this promise that I’d more than likely break it once the World Cup kicked off, but what even I didn’t expect was to find myself sat here watching tennis updates on a Monday afternoon. But what can you do?

Anyway, this is an odds World Cup website and I don’t know why I’m bothering to outpour all of this to you. Wait, yes I do. It’s because I can’t afford to see a counsellor.

So, Rio’s gone and done his knee in right before the competition starts. Shame, eh? No, not really. I’m not going to say I don’t think Ferdinand’s a half decent player on his day, but what I will say is that it’s rarely his day when he’s wearing an England shirt. And I’d even go as far as to say that I feel a lot more content knowing Ledley King’s playing at the back than I do Ferdinand.

What else has been going on over the past couple of weeks? Theo Walcott being left at home. Thank you Capello, I was actually starting to question your sense but this has made it all good again. Although still not sure why Carragher got the nod ahead of Dawson, but that’s neither here nor there now as Daws has had to cancel his summer holidays anyway.

What about the England friendlies? Weren’t we awful?  The answer is probably ‘yes’, but I feel like I’d be doing a disservice were I to proclaim it, as I’d only be going on what I read in the papers and heard from taxi drivers. The reason for this: I was without a telly for the Mexico game and couldn’t pull together even three quid for a drink in the pub, so instead I listened to it on 5Live, and then I missed the Japan game (glad I did, actually) because I was still high as a kite and midway through a 48-hour Mephedrone binge (that’s Meow Meow to you and I), and at the time of kick-off I’d just turned up at my little sister’s flat, knees shaking, teeth grinding, for some tea, biscuits and 1990s trance music. She provided only two of the first three listed essentials, so I left and danced my way down the street and proceeded to have a conversation about the point of war with a pigeon that I thought was David Cameron.

There is good news to come from this. The comedown that followed the binge proved to be one too many, and I’ve now decided to stay completely off of the drugs. I found I was becoming far too dependent on the Meow, and even I will admit that as great as it is, it’s still a skanky drug and not something that I want to give up my job, girlfriend, flat and everything else for.

This should mean that I’ll be able to give you a good account of my World Cup watching experience, whether it be from the work trip I have to take to Holland on the same day England play Slovenia; from a pub in Sheperds Bush; from the BBC or ITV website on my office computer; or wherever else I might find myself during game time.

And I won’t just be confining myself to England games. Nope. I intend to watch every match of the tournament, even if it means snorting some Meow to keep me going through games like South Korea vs Greece, New Zealand vs Paraguay, or Honduras vs Switzerland.

Damn! I’ve slipped into my old thinking already. That is not the true me. I’m clean, man, I’m clean. You gotta believe me!

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