I may not know much about football...

It was fun while it lasted, being a critical consumer. For weeks I have proudly used Chrome instead of Internet Explorer, praised its swiftness, and felt very grand for making the effort of testing another browser instead of passively trudging on with IE, just because it's Microsoft and what I'm used to. But now, after having wasted an hour of my life looking for a print preview function, I give up. If you want to do anything remotely fancy in Chrome (and surely print preview isn't that fancy?), you have to rely on a "Gallery" of additional functions programmed not by Google itself but by happy amateurs around the world. I'm sure it's very kind of them to share their add-ons with us, but sadly there's no guarantee (as, after trying to install two of them, I've now found out) that they actually work. So, back to lumbering old IE. At least it's got all the functions you need, as well as a great many you don't need. "Don't be evil" is all very well as a company motto, but "Be professional" would be even better.

Anyway, moving on to the subject of the moment: the Football World Cup.

Wonderful as world and European championships must be for real football fans, they (the fans) do have a lot to put up with as well. It is at times like these when people like me, who don't know the first thing about the game, insist on taking an interest. Instead of regional teams, which don't really capture the imagination of the football illiterate, we have ACTUAL COUNTRIES playing against each other. This is great fun. If our own country doesn't win, we football philistines can always root for other countries we like for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with actual footballing skills. I love French history and English literature and have a Western European bias altogether - with the result that no matter how many times they let me down, I will still have a soft spot for these countries' teams.

I am starting to change my mind about France, though. One thing a football philistine does not forgive easily is if a team plays "boring" football. We want to see the players rush back and forth on the field trying to score goals. We don't care about tactics or saving your strength until it's really needed. This is why I can never warm to the Italian team, even though I like Italy as a country. Once they score, they spend the rest of the time more or less standing in front of their own goal defending their position. It may be tactical brilliance, but it's boring, boring, boring. France suffers from a similar problem: their games have, in later years, become increasingly dull to watch. Now the England team may fail as often as not, but something still makes them watchable. Perhaps it's all those near-misses that keep you on your toes. Pity any sincere football fan, though, who has to watch World Cup games with me and listen to my comments. "If Lampard is such a great shot, why has he never scored a goal while I'm watching?" "Didn't Crouch use to be a red-head? I think red hair goes better to the lanky, lantern-jawed look somehow." Capello, as you see, needn't fear any competition from this quarter.