Elissa

Email from the Editor: ‘For your next column please could you write your perspective on the World Cup’.

Wait, sorry, the World Cup is on, has it started? Oh, I’m really not that bothered this year.

‘You have to watch England, support your home country,’ he suggested.

‘Err … no I don’t’, I replied.

Over the years I’ve excitedly followed the World Cup, glued to the television with my three brothers.

I watched the Liverpool legend and heartthrob of the time, Kevin Keegan in 1982, Maradona’s dodgy goal in 1986, Gazza’s tears in 1990 and then England’s last great World Cup performance in 2002 with Golden Balls Beckham’s match-winning penalty against Argentina. But since then … well, for over a decade England haven’t won a knockout game since 2006.

They are perceived as the perennial underachievers. It’s embarrassing.

Our players get paid obscene amounts of money, live in a designer-lifestyle bubble but unlike their German or Spanish counterparts, when it comes to playing with intelligence and technique, they fail.

They have an inability to keep the ball and can’t cope with the pressure and end up playing abysmally.

So I have decided to compile a short list of things I would rather do this year than watch England play in the World Cup:

• Be Donald Trump’s secretary

• Attend a Trump Rally

• Drink a can of Coke Zero that has been sat in the car for two hours

• Invite 10 children over for a bake-off

• Discuss Brexit

• Let my kids play with glitter

• Have Gordon Ramsay critique my cooking

• Watch the film Fifty Shades of Grey

• Eat herrings

• Watch the Glee box set