I met some Slovakia fans in the fanzone. They were all very friendly, when there was a band playing they started dancing and then I and a few England fans had a kickabout with them. Sometimes the ball landed in the band's area, they didn't care much though, just chucked it back. During the game, I was getting annoyed with our fans being quiet, even at 2-1 up the Slovakians were louder. I have to respect their fan base. Still, England won and it's another World Cup. In Britain, that starts with a draw sarcastically commentated over with Guy Mowbray, as we return to the studio with Gary Lineker and the MOTD crew saying "England will not progress/definitely progress from that group" (never an in-between), with the one African or Asian country being described as "tricky",before attention turns to the bigger match between Spain/France/Germany and Brazil/Argentina. The pre-World Cup friendlies come, we beat Denmark 2-1 and Bulgaria 1-0 but lose to Chile 3-1, this is overall hailed a success with things to work on by ITV and Southgate. Promo after promo, not withstanding a Panorama about Russian hooliganism which doesn't come to fruition at all, it finally starts with borderline racist ITV titles, overly-England focused BBC coverage ("So we've seen the opening match, Russia 0-0 Cameroon, what does that tell you about England's chances in Group G against Iran on Tuesday?"), an official World Cup song by Shakira to forget about, a much more viral song that we remember (waaaave your flag), everything in the universe being in the official font, with the official background, the BBC to introduce their fifth new scoreboard graphic in four years, and ITV to introduce an overly clunky one which exists for the sake of being in the same style of the titles, and England to come second in their group after an underwhelming win and a couple of worse draws (Draw 1, on ITV commentated by Clive Tyldsley: "We were unlucky but if we play like that we could go far" Draw 2 on the BBC: "What the fuck was that"), the Scottish media will criticise Tyldsley, not without merit, for being so biased towards England, but it doesn't matter, as we get knocked out of the Round of 16 by whoever won their group. In the quarter-finals, the dark horse who are living a "fairytale" will get knocked out by Germany, but only After Extra Time or maybe on penalties, and have made Asia/Africa (the whole continent, for some reason) proud. The semi-finals lead to the Third Place play-off, which will be on ITV like always, where Sam Matterface and Andy Townsend spend the whole time discussing why the play-off shouldn't exist, before an underwhelming final won 1-0 in extra time. The result allowing our quadrennial access to that is the main thing, no-one will remember this result in England or Slovakia. 2-1