World Cup Fever

After an exhausting day on the golf course, the England squad returned to their complex in a gleaming entourage of bullet-proof limousines.
Their lunch had been fine; a delicate salad, fillet steak accompanied by green beans and four helping of banoffee pie, helped down by Castle lager.
Once back, King Fabio, he from humble beginnings, the only son of a match-fixer from a tiny village in Umbria called Inertia, cemented the players’ compliance by allowing them to spend the rest of the day concentrating on their PlayStations and Wiis.
‘Whooppee!’ came the cries, gormless expressions akin to a creche full of children just out of diapers.
One player, known for his shrewd tampering of prices in large DIY outlets, spent some time on a very nice toilet seat and wrestled with the idea of relieving it from its post, but decided not to, realising that he’d probably be caught smuggling it home if he tried. He knew that a second scandal would be too much for his loving family to stomach.
A few of the lads hung about on the main veranda to practise their spitting on the passing staff below, while others cried into photos of their parents, alone in their sumptuous apartments.
King Fabio had missed the golf excursion in order to research South Africa’s technical skills in battling alapetia.
After being dragged from one London’s hospital to another by his stricken and increasingly hairless wife in pursuit of ‘the best treatment money could buy’, he’d run out of time and arrived close to the other side of the world still utterly clueless for her.
At one hospital, with ‘Royal’ in its name, Fabio and his wife had assumed it to be private.
When they were told it was an NHS hospital, they almost jumped out of their skin, making for the door in fear of catching a waft of MRSA if they stayed a moment longer.
Back at the complex, the lads finished off the day by masturbating over hired beauties plucked from Africa’s finest half-caste families, who entered their rooms dressed only in England shirts and left once the lads had come into their tissues.
The day of reckoning announced itself with tannoyed alarms of ‘Ingerlund, Ingerlund, Ingerlund!’ the volume rising steadily for those still dreaming that they were in their majestic Merseyside gardens flipping Waitrose lamb-burgers for local landowners.
Once up, though, the lads congregated in the breakfast arena, specially designed in the shape of a football field with seating arrangement in King Fabio’s favoured four-four-two formation.
James and Carson had been confined to their rooms since the Green howler, one of King Fabio’s more Macchiavellian methods of punishment.
‘Let zis be a sign to all you of,’ he’d barked next to his wife, who hadn’t been seen without one hat or another since stepping down from her chauffeur-driven mobile hairdressing salon at Heathrow.
‘Can we play golf today?’ asked a disguised voice. They all wanted to play golf and had drawn straws to see who’d ask King Fabio.
The six million-dollar man was appalled.
‘How you can hask play glof on day like zis?’ He was clearly incensed by the plea. ‘Hof gorse you cannot play glof today! We have match, no? With the mighty Algeria! Come wiz me.’
The lads formed a line and followed King Fabio like penguins out onto the training pitch.
Being the great man he is, he had devised a simple session for the big match that lay in wait that very night against the mighty Algeria.
Once the team had made it to the middle of the training pitch, King Fabio detailed them on his tactical genius.
‘Wiz all zese Algerians masters who plays most in premier league of glorious Belgium, we muzd be on tops of our games.’
The lads looked bemusedly around the pitch, which had been turned into a gigantic pool-table.
‘But boss,’ squealed Commander Gerrard. ‘We’re playing a footy match tonight, aren’t we?’
‘Stupid boy!’ replied the imperious God of war. ‘Yes! We play footyfoot match tonight, but we muzd understand how hit ball wizzout going in the hair.’
Those with a sense of humour were happy that his wife wasn’t present.
It was true, though. The players hadn’t adapted to the World Cup ball, oddly spherical. Master Rooney couldn’t keep it down, saying it was ‘too round and all that, like’.
They got on with the training session without a whimper, side-footing the multi-coloured balls into the six drilled-out holes until there were no more balls left.
After precisely seven minutes and fourteen seconds, King Fabio announced that the session was complete.
So pleased was he with their ball-control and ‘team-temperament’, he rewarded the lads by inviting them, goalkeepers and all, to take an undercover lunch at ‘Schillaci’s’ in Stellenbosch.
There, they gorged on imported cheeses, local vineyard wines and meats of the finest quality, rounded off by copious mounds of Kelly’s Clotted Ice Cream.
‘We muzd go to match now,’ said King Fabio.
Suddenly, there was outrage. Several players had thought that they’d be going back to the complex for an afternoon nap and they’d forgotten to bring their teddy bears.
‘We can’t go without the teddy bears, King Fabio,’ they squealed in eunuch unison.
But there’d be no time for that.
‘I weel call ze complex and hask Hamericans Hexprezz to courier ze teddy boyz to Green Point for match.’
‘Oh, will you, King Fabio? Thank you, King Fabio,’ the lads tweeted, rubbing their hands with glee.
Princes Harry and William greeted the players in the dressing-room before kick-off.
‘Now you won’t let us down, will you?’ said William with his hands behind his back, secretly crossing his fingers that the players understood his accent and a few of the more difficult words.
‘Of course we won’t,’ they all burped back. ‘We’re in it to win it, Your Highnesses. We’ve waited sixty-six years,’ (some wiseguy thought it was more like fifty) ‘for this and we’re going to bring back the Cup for you.’
But Harry wasn’t convinced. ‘You look a bit, well, bloated. What’s been your diet in preparation for the match?’
The lads kept Mum and tried to hide the stains on the bibs that they’d stolen from ‘Scillaci’s’.
‘Mostly M and S, Your Highnesses, flown in special, like,’ interjected King Fabio, trying to imitate a Liverpudlian accent. ‘Monster Munches and Fazzles have been banned, I assures you.’
A few of the lads stemmed laughter and shuffled nervously.
‘Oh well,’ said Harry finally. ‘Good luck and break a leg, an Algerian’s preferably.’
The lads liked that. Harry knew how to relax them.
When the two teams went out to play, the crowd roared with excitement.
Now in the limelight, with victory beckoning, the expressions of the England players changed from carefree haplessness into mean, focused killing machines.
Back in Blighty, millions of fans lined lager-filled bars cheering at screens, punching the air with clenched teeth.
How long they’d waited with pride, toiling long hours to afford Sky HD and microwave popcorn for their children.
Plastic flags displayed on Transit vans and semis were faithfully gaffered to wing-mirrors and windows in anticipation of our rightful national glory.
Newspaper sales shot up by 66% with front page headlines urging us to ‘Cry God for Harry, England and St George’.
The time had come to silence the critics who had lambasted our integrity and show the nation the true value of our spirit. The lads would show the world their hereditary supremacy in the art of putting a round ball into an oblong net, and some players were even glad to postpone sales of their match-shirts on Ebay a full week after the final.
The first ten minutes were frustrating. The players started complaining to each other that the ball was ‘too round and everything’ and that it had a mind of its own. It kept on walking off and doing funny things like moving.
King Fabio remonstrated on the touchline, knees bent painfully as if to imitate an Italian gentleman stuck on the toilet with constipation, or an English carpet-fitter with a hernia.
The mighty Algeria, with all their illustrious multi-million pound players weaving and stalking with calm, snakelike agility, the English paupers toiled for possession, snapping at the feet of the oppositon.
Master Rooney practised some spitting by landing a few with venom only inches from the North Africans’ feet in an attempt to rile and unnerve, while Commander Gerrard squealed for a good line.
But the mighty Algeria ploughed on.
At half-time, Detective Sergeant Beckham, drafted in from The National Observatory of Loyal Umbro Card Kleptomaniacs (NOLUCK), made his presence felt.
‘It’s alright, lads. It’s OK,’ he said, feeling a song coming on, holding out the sweaty palms of his hands to them. ‘All we gotta do is play better and stuff. It’s as simple as one-two-three.’
‘I thought we was playing four-four-two, guv,’ said a rather timid Lennon, sat haunched in the corner of the marble-lined room.
‘It’s an expression,’ said Beckham. ‘Oh, whatever. Do what you want. Just win it, will ya!’
The lads offered Churchill Dog car-model nods to reveal their understanding.
When news came that Princes Harry and William were coming down from their seats to show them how it was done with the aid of a meaty henchman and three baseball bats, the lads hid in their lockers.
Once the princes had gone, the players scurried back out to the field for the second half, not forgetting to salute the princes in the stands.
King Fabio had spent the interval in a separate room being massaged by a local healer.
With a conference call to his friends down the road at the Italian complex, he’d managed to relax enough to blank out the shameful first half performance of his players.
Back in England, with half of the workers weekly wage already blown before the weekend had even started, on beer, fast food, taxis and gambling (investing in England), the awful hopelessness of the dream was being drawn onto the expressions of those who watched their pride wilt to a whimper, their money slowly sliding down the drain with every minute that passed.
Fluff after fluff, missing chances with amazing accuracy, the lads marched on against the majesty of the famous Algerians, who continued to masterfully stroke the strangest round ball in front of the infidels, teasing with their triple-A talent, steeped in its footballing history as England could never be.
Having chosen a Travel Tavern for their stay, the Algerian hitmen had relaxed well, taking the taxi-bus to the training ground and eating only the finest pavement food.
In comparison, the English nobodies, from various local clubs dotted around back home, had eaten far too much and some even slept with their headphones on.
Commentators tried to make sense of the game. Why were the fearless lions playing like infantile baffoons?
Talk of the change in climate from the previous England game in Johannesburg were offered, but the oxygen levels were much better in Cape Town and there was a nice little breeze from the seaside. Were the winds of change upon the team or was it the cheese from lunch-time? What was eating them up? Had they seen too much poverty in South Africa? Perhaps it was playing on the team’s conscience. Even the pundits were flummoxed, heads in hands.
Perhaps the complex wasn’t good enough for them? Would a move to a comfy little island off the coast change them for the better in preparation for matches?
Someone mentioned that they might be able to do them a deal to have Robben Island for the rest of the month, but a pundit said that it sounded Dutch or something, and the matter was dropped.
At the end of the game, Master Rooney, an eminent ambassador for The National Trust, went to speech to the nation by spitting into a camera.
Our finest player needed to get a few things off his chest.
‘Nice to see your own fans booing you,’ said Master Rooney to his loving followers. ‘That’s what loyal support is, for fuck’s sake.’
Back home, the troubled, red-faced, white-shirted fans couldn’t have agreed more, and decided to turn into hooligans, running amok around town.
Newly unelected members of parliament sat at home, busy sifting through the previous week’s expenses, grudgingly typing the paltry amounts into an IPad, then throwing the receipts into a good-sized suitcase and replacing it under the bed.
What a laborious task that must be.
Back at the complex, the lads sobbed into teddies while they awaited the right royal rollocking from King Fabio, who had been engaged in talks with his agent since the final whistle blew.
‘If you leave now, like a dirty little scumbag,’ his agent said, ‘you’ll only get eight and a million pounds compensation, but if you stay, and they sack you,’ he added, with a finger in the air,’ you’ll get eight million, five hundred and twenty-three pounds and fifty-two pence.’
With this juicy incentive to stay on as proud England manager, King Fabio decided there and then not to resign. He’d battle on for them. Besides all the other fringe benefits, he liked his London residence the most and wanted to stay put a few more months there. Besides that, he liked the girl from Sky who stood outside the gates every Thursday morning, hoping to give him a blow-job in exchange for some meaty gossip on players.
The African air had done nothing for his wife’s hair, which continued to fall out at a rate of knots never seen before. Although he wanted desperately to go back to London with her, he knew that he must stay to help England’s cause.
By the time he got back to the complex, all but one of the lads had gone to bed.
Master Rooney sat at the end of his double-queen bed watching over and over as he spoke to the nation on his portable DVD player.
There was something missing, he kept thinking, and then he finally understood. He hadn’t spat at the camera.
‘Fuck it!’ he screamed on realising his stupid mistake.
‘Are you alright, Wayne?’ asked a voice from behind a wall.
‘Yeah, just watching the game. Fuckin’ shite, weren’t we.’
Back in England, windows were smashing, doors were slamming, sinks were being filled with filthy kebab-sick and children were crying…
for England.