Testing times

THERE'S no doubt that it's the best international football tournament we've got. But as the next European Championship isn't for a couple of years, we'll have to make do with the World Cup.

After my football gap year I'd become so disillusioned with the game that I took a season out I'm raring to go.

Nothing has changed my mind about the increasingly seedy and predictable nature of modern football, but the World Cup will always be compulsive television, although that doesn't mean it will be any good.

There's a Sudoku World Cup Book in the shops now. Many Sudoku fans admit that the number puzzles, while fiendishly addictive, are ultimately curiously unfulfilling. And that is precisely how most World Cups work, leaving you feeling empty afterwards, despite the handful of great matches that even the worst tournaments throw up.

When you consider the gruesome domination of Argentina and West Germany in the mid-1980s, it's hard to escape the conclusion that the bad guys, the men in black hats, too often come out on top.

Last time, Brazil weren't bad winners, although their progress to the final was helped by weak referees who seemed too much in awe to penalise them, while Germany once again rode their luck, in an infinitely depressing fashion, all the way to the final.

The European Championship has certainly provided much more diversity, nine winners in 12 tournaments. Until the African nations get their act together it will remain, effectively, the World Cup minus Argentina and Brazil. With far fewer duff teams, and less tension, the European Championship makes for a superior competition.

However, for event snobs, the World Cup is the Big One simply because, like the Olympics, it is universal. Thirty-two nations will be watched by half the planet as they play a wonderfully simple game consisting of 17 basic laws (except when they can get away with one or two of them).

You could make a strong argument that football is a positive force, bringing people together as nothing else can, although the English, German and Polish fans might well test that one to destruction.

The World Cup contains everything about football that repels and attracts. The greatest talents are on display but the grotesque importance attached to the competition means that winning has become, for too many people, the only thing that counts. In the end, the willingness to cheat just that little bit better is often all that separates the top teams.

Then again, there's nothing new under the sun. In 1934, Italy wouldn't have done it without Mussolini's machinations, and many people believe that General Jorge Videla's role in 1978 for Argentina was as important as that of Ossie Ardiles and Mario Kempes.

But I have to admit that the way politics and football often become bedfellows, and the way the sport becomes an unhealthy source of the worst kind of nationalism, are part of its fascination. Hitler and Franco also used football despite having no interest in it, as did the Stasi in East Germany and Stalin's secret police chief, Beria.

It's tempting to suggest that Argentina, who over the years have shown spectacular disregard for the spirit of the game, would be appropriate winners again.

England, meanwhile, can probably be relied on to play their part in maintaining the traditions of the tournament by going out at the quarter-final stage.

But let's hope for something better. And let's hope we aren't all heaving a collective sigh of relief on the night of July 9, switching off our TVs and saying: "Thank God it's all over".