Since the back-end of last week I have sadly been suffering from a debilitating and highly contagious fever. This fever is particularly contagious as it spreads through a variety of channels from a simple glimmer of mindless optimism through to the more steadfast desire to drink beer. Yes dear readers, I have been diagnosed with the deadly World Cup Fever.
The symptoms have been there for some time of course. A sudden interest in mundane friendlies, the idol glances at flights to Brazil, the inexplicable willingness to listen to what Alan Shearer has to say… my rapid decline to spending my days reading articles about football matches from the night before that I was actually watching and didn’t particularly enjoy at the time was rapid but inevitable. So rapid has the football fever epidemic spread that the NHS has actually been forced to delegate the prescription of pain killing medication to the landlords of public houses across the land. Yet I fear that despite enormous stockpiles of the medication being brought in by big pharmacies such as Tesco and Oddbins, for many the liquid painkiller may not be enough with England already a game down and a vicious strain of Luis Suarez Disease edging its way towards our great nation.
But, whilst certainly debilitating, World Cup Fever is rarely deadly and, particularly in the UK, symptoms tend to lessen significantly after what is known as “the group stage”. Also, it must be said, for the partners of those suffering who may be in the process of planning a wedding there are certain advantages. Sufferers from World Cup Fever, often found staring blankly at TV punditry by Alan Hansen are known to be much more amenable to saying yes without argument as long as you promise to stop talking quickly so that they don’t miss out on some half-banter between Thierry Henry and Rio Ferdinand. The watching of football matches has also long been known as an effective emotional blackmail weapon when it comes to visiting potential venues “as long as we’re back for the match”. With World Cup Fever typically not peaking until around 5pm and often as late as 11pm, sufferers are, for the most part, typically mostly functional for the rest of the day (although they may well feel groggy and complain of headaches until provided with a bacon sandwich.
So, whilst the onslaught of this disease may bring national productivity down to its lowest level in four years and have the potential to cause the BBC Sport website to crash, the outlook is not entirely negative. However, sufferers should most certainly be monitored for fear that the condition deteriorate into the dreaded Championship Manager disease for which I fear there is no cure.
