Ode to Benjamin Massing

With the bulk of the punditry elite furiously contesting that Shaun Wright-Phillips’ four minutes of playing time would not be as impacting as thrusting little Adam Johnson’s two minutes of token involvement, or that the ‘form trumps former glory’ thesis that Capello pedalled for long is slightly thinner and less prevalent than first imagined, Anglo-centric mania is truly gripping the nation in a staggeringly familiar way.

Whilst the BBC’s rather dreary online live text coverage of the desperately slow attempts of the Boss Man to get in contact with those unlucky chaps who will have to instead devise an alternative to their summers did slightly resemble the rounding up of a group of the world's best drilling engineers to plant a nuclear bomb on an Earth-ending asteroid, there were no exiles kindred to Gazza’s genuinely shocking 1998 rejection.

Soon Gabriel Clarke will take his rightful place camping outside wherever the English band of brothers happen to be defecating hoping for a three-second assessment of ‘the mood of the camp’, and a nation will be united in patriotic fever, inevitably followed by disgruntlement upon exit via jingoism.

Yet, the little-known secret is that the World Cup is more than just an exercise for the fanatic allegiance to the Three Lions. Nor is it purely about the ultimate conquerors in Johannesburg on July 11th. The dramas in South Africa will not only showcase the talents of the most recognisable players on the planet, but will make somewhat obscure players from lesser-known nations into cherished heroes.

Though having only half-filled my already creased and battered Panini World Cup sticker album (anyone need a Steven Pienaar? I have three already), I am overwhelmed in feverish anticipation of the delights of three full games a day of half-familiar teams that requires my full Football Manager memory to flip into overdrive. Personally, I am excited about witnessing the Danish forward Soren Larsen, apparently a handful in real life who became a hero after signing for my beloved Swindon Town upon promotion to the Big League.

Trawling through the BBC’s excellent World Cup video archive, it becomes fully apparent that the truly memorable moments in past tournaments can spring up from anywhere, any team and any one player. Sunday Oliseh, Papa Bouba Diop, Pierre Njanka, I salute you.

Ultimately, I am too tentative to accurately predict the next François Omam-Biyik or Saeed Al-Owairan, but with the blog’s prompt expert analysis of potential stars of the tournament I am being accelerated into appropriate corners. A virgin World Cup on African soil could increase the chance of the continents qualifiers, and throughout all eight groups there is the potential for the unpredictable.

So, let’s just hope Andy Townsend doesn’t spoil the half-time coverage of Honduras versus Chile with in-depth analysis of Emile Heskey’s faeces and the 'mood' of the England camp.

by Eddie Golby