But I just can't forget
How your love left a hole
Like a penalty kick
Right to my soul
A Shakespearean sonnet this is not, yet these jocular lyrics have their own curious tale. They arrive, if you believe it, from a hastily-concocted heavy metal band hilariously called Group of Death. Just to continue the footballing joke a little further, these lyrics are from a song ironically titled Your Love Is Like A Boot In The Face. Which is what Australia and the US might feel like after the World Cup draw.
The Aussies are drawn with Spain and Holland, the Americans with Portugal and Germany. Tough luck, mates, but please remember, as all true football fans do, that the authentic Group of Death is usually the one England insist they are in. This time they have Italy and Uruguay, difficult rivals but not fatal, yet already the self-flagellation has begun.
But, really, this is just part of the hocus-pocus of the Cup. In truth, the Group of Death (GOD) can be a boon to concentration. No coasting, no fiddling around, no experimenting: it demands you play well from the start. History is proof of what is possible.
In 1958, the Group of Death - and we are all allowed to have our own versions of this GOD - was Brazil, England, USSR, Austria. In 1970, Brazil, England, Romania, Czechoslovakia. In 1978, Argentina, France, Italy, Hungary. In 2006, Italy, Ghana, Czech Republic, US. I hope you're paying attention... because in all those years the eventual Cup winner came from this group.
The Group of Death is more than a neat dividing of teams and permission to start planning fake sick leave for next summer. It is a vital ceremonial act in the countdown to the Cup. Somehow till June we must keep ourselves entertained. Usually an English player helps by breaking a metatarsal and thereafter a website will spring up to keep watch over its healing.
A Cup is nothing without quaint ritual. The end of qualification, for instance, requires sober reflection for there is always a talent - i.e. George Best in the 1960s - that hasn't made it to a Cup. This year's absentee from Brazil humbly thinks we should simply cancel Brazil. Said Sweden's Zlatan Ibrahimovic: "A World Cup without me is nothing to watch so it is not worthwhile to wait for the World Cup."
Always before a Cup an agile politician, in this case Michel Platini, will forfeit common sense at the altar of votes and suggest the Cup should have more teams. No sir, 32 is fine, 40 is excessive.
Always during discussions on antique heroes at ancient Cups a young fan will try and tell us that history is bunk. A colleague, just 30, and besotted by Ronaldo, replied to a question on the grand Cameroonian goal-scoring artist, Roger Milla, by casually remarking that he had vaguely heard of a goalkeeper called M-I-L-L-E-R. Oh dear.
Always a new football will appear with a curious name and a tall claim. This year it is the Brazuca, which is said to be the "most tested" adidas ball of all time. We believe them. Who dares argue with a ball that has its own Twitter account with 94,116 followers. A small aside: if a football is tweeting, and you're following, the world is in trouble.
The Brazuca is heir to the Jabulani, the Teamgeist, the Fevernova. Nice. But I only remember an unnamed ball: the old, leathery one with the clumsy bladder. If you headed it on wet days when it soaked up the rain you had to truly love football for a concussion was imminent.
In older days you were happy if the ball took flight; yet before the 2010 World Cup, players complained about the method of flight. Fortunately discussions on aerodynamics were stifled that year by Spain's Avaro Arbeloa, who offered us some necessary perspective on the football: "It's round, like always."
Always, before a Cup, Pele will make a prediction, even if his soothsaying is less accurate than a twitching octopus. Once he insisted an African team would win the Cup by 2000. We are still waiting.
But he is Pele, we will listen. At 73, he will not get another chance to see his nation win at home and in Brazil, perhaps, an old debate is about to find new voice. Is winning the Cup enough for Brazil or must it be elegantly won?
The Dutch will ask this, too, for in these nations football is not merely a game, it is a dance, a philosophy, an ideology. Must art bend to practicality? Tastes evidently are changing. In 2010, a Nike ad in Holland pointedly, and sadly, noted that "football isn't Total without victory" and "a beautiful loss is still a loss".
Six months of chatter remain and we crave it because Cups are built on anticipation. Waiting and wondering is part of sports' music, though Fifa sometimes seems out of tune. Their reported ban on samba drums in stadiums is a stealing away of an essential part of football's culture. These are the drums to which a game sways. To ban them is akin to silencing singing on the English terraces.
So let them drum, fellows. It's a whole lot more fun than bringing back The Group of Death to sing:
Your love is like
a boot in the face
Your kick leaves a mark
That my heart can't erase
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