It was a few moments before the whistle blew on the opening match of the 2006 World Cup when a text message arrived from a colleague. ‘Well, here we go!’ it read. I rolled my eyes, slipped my phone back into my pocket, and left the message unanswered.
Why the grumpiness? Because the message came from a man who normally took no interest whatsoever in the game, except to occasionally mock people like me for being daft enough to enjoy a ‘silly game with silly men kicking a ball around’. Yet here he was, transformed by the arrival of the World Cup into an enthusiastic student of… ‘footie’.
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