Fill in

It's just not happening today, I'm too tense to talk about Holland and Spain, so I'm afraid you'll have to wait. Here's something from 2006 instead. It's about the Trinidad game, which as you may recall started slowly, only to turn out well at the end. It's notable among other things for the way in which a player's reputation can change. It's hard to believe I ever wrote about Terry or Rooney in those terms.


England 2 Trinidad and Tobago 0
England Crouch 83, Gerrard 91

Eight ninths of that was horrible. If it was up to me I’d have an hour to lie down, then I’d watch the Sweden Paraguay game, then I might be ready to face writing. But no, I’m a professional, if not actually a professional journalist, and it’s my duty to make you suffer too.

So, the high anxiety highlights. After 6 minutes, Lampard had a shot, and it bounced out to Owen. Ooh, a good chance already, we thought, he’ll get on the next one now. Oh the naivety of youth.

After 14 minutes, Joe Cole crossed, Crouch got on the end of it, but the keeper was there to turn it round. Never mind.

27 minutes, and finally England really damage the opposition, when Gerrard shoots straight into Dwight Yorke’s balls, at point blank range. Yorke lies prone for a minute, while we all feel his pain, having not yet grown into our own. Then he gets up, and the trainer offers him a bottle of water. He takes it, and pours it into his shorts.

34 minutes, and Lampard goes close, but then so does Stern John for Trinidad. A few minutes later, Lampard again puts a great chance over the bar.
 
As halftime looms, Beckham puts in a great ball from the right, which falls to Crouch, in front of goal, with no defenders near him, and time to pull it down. Why did he do that? Why did he do that? Now the crowd is shouting for Rooney.

And we’re so nearly punished for it. Robinson flaps airily at another ball, John beats Ferdinand to it and it’s looping lazily into the net. John Terry, understanding that this isn’t a turn of events any of us are going to be casual about, hurls himself through the air and negotiates a deal with the ball, in which it goes the other way, while he flies into the goal. I love him like I love pie. I could eat them both up, but somehow I’m just not hungry right now.

Halftime is just fifteen minutes of pacing up and down and muttering. Idly playing with the remote, it seems that some people are doing other things. Lucky bastards.

After ten minutes, Crouch decides to try and relieve the tension with a spectacular overhead kick, which goes wrong. Not spectacularly wrong, just uselessly and trivially wrong. Then Owen heads close.

Not close enough, though, and he’s replaced by Winston Churchill. No, that’s Wayne Rooney, raising everyone’s spirits with his trademark bowler hat and cigar. And Lennon comes on too, replacing Carragher. Somehow they manage to spark 20,000 people each into life, and across the stadium hope wrestles fear to the ground and sits on its head.

After ten minutes he’s looking puffed out, though, and fear gets hope in a stranglehold again. Gareth Southgate says England seem drained from the tension of the game. Drained from the tension? They should try watching it.

Now, when England need it most, Lampard takes control. Someone else should have done, but no it had to be him. He shoots over from a corner, he shoots straight at Hislop, in acres of space, then he goes narrowly wide with the hardest chance of the three. Just to twist the knife, Stern John breaks free, but misses from the edge of the box.

83 minutes have passed when Beckham gets the ball down the right, and hits it just so. Crouch gets into the box, and heads it just so, and suddenly the precise location of 450 grams of air and rubber is making one per cent of the world hugely happier, and one and a half million people desperately sad. Jeremy Bentham would have approved.

England pretend they’re going to go all casual on us, just to tease, but now Gerrard feels like one of his party pieces, so just like that he gives us one. Dwight Yorke is probably heartily wishing he could have got his groin in the way again, but too late.

Trinidad manage one swift kick to the collective solar plexus in return, Stern John deflecting a Cornell Glen shot into the net, but, no, it’s offside and you just can’t, OK?

It must have been so hard on the Trinidad players, who’d done so well, and got so close. God, I don’t care. I’m sorry, but I keep my moral centre in the bottom of my stomach, and it hasn’t come back yet.

You had to enjoy the players’ faces. Crouch just looked happily angular, but Beckham grinned like a small boy who’s suddenly found out there is jelly after all. Gerrard, meanwhile, changed in an instant from cheeky munchkin to Botticelli angel. I could have sworn there was a kind of glow in the air around him.

So England are through, and very likely to win the group. Any of the other three could go with them. I’ll run through the permutations after the next game. And now there’s a gin bottle in the kitchen, and I’m going to test its soothing powers. If you don’t get Sweden-Paraguay until tomorrow, then I hope you’ll understand.