When the Cup runneth over...

Nowhere to hide. No gentle way to say it. France 98 is coming your way: 5,760 hours of television pictures, 80 to 100 television cameras to each match, 12,000 journalists . . . So you think it's all over? It could well be if we're talking about normal human relations.

"Put it this way," writes straight-shooting Irish Times sports columnist Mary Hannigan, "if you're not a football fan don't even think about turning on your television between June 10th and July 12th. Between them, RTE, BBC, ITV and Eurosport will bring live coverage of all 64 matches from France." It gets worse, for even should you quite like the football, you may loathe the incessant banging on about it. "In between they'll be previewing, reviewing, analysing and scrutinising all the action."

And that's not counting the torrent of "analysis" from the lads at home. The ones with the doctor's note for the mystery "virus", missing Eamonn Dunphy in spite of themselves and throwing tantrums, beer cans and obscenities at the box in the corner. Oh Lord. But let's be clear about this. No one is safe.

"What a catastrophe," writes an appalled Matthew Parris in the London Times. "One became a homosexual to get away from that sort of thing." And while one didn't exactly become a woman to get away from that sort of thing, one did think it conferred a degree of immunity. But women, God help us, are shaping up to be the worst offenders.

There have always been a few female fans, and there are busloads of female fans of the game plugging along out there, 7,000 women players in the Ladies FAI alone - a pale reflection of the 168,000 males to be sure, but all the more credit to them for hanging in there despite the taunts about "yer boobs gettin' in the way".

But fandom itself is fast becoming fashionable for females. A national fan survey carried out for the FA Premier League suggests that in clubs such as Sheffield Wednesday and Leicester City, one in three new fans is female, and giving as good as the lads by forming their own gangs and swearing and shouting at referees.

No-one is quite sure what is behind the trend. There's a notion that it is something to do with the arrival of all-seater stadiums, the continental glamour-boys and some clever marketing. It's the marketing of the game, the selling of a ludicrously pampered and overpaid shower of Big Jessies as product, and the gentrification begun by Nick Hornby, that has created the impression of a watchable, safe and sexy sport.

So women in Loaded magazine write conversion confessions: "I just grumbled and grumbled about how dull, dull, dull football was and how mean, mean, mean my beastly boyf was to drag me there. But after five seconds (and a bucket of Bolly in the directors' box), I just found myself thinking - this was like, Wow! I was so not bored anymore! Football is so, like, aMAZing!"

And the professional players - they cry like babies, toss their locks for shampoo ads, flash their label-lout credentials in Gucci sandals and Armani hats, and never cease to astonish with babble about games being of "two halves" and "getting a result".

But it hasn't all gone the marketing people's way. Just when they thought they'd pulled it off and that the feminisation of football was complete, along came those racey Newcastle dudes, Freddie Shepherd and Doug Hall, with a reminder of what a gallant, soppy old bunch those football bosses can be when it comes to women and the fans. Drunken fans? Good. (Freddie and Co own the pubs). Local girls? Bad. ("Dogs"). Young fans? Mugs. (Morons who pay more than £50 for club gear that Freddie and Co buy in for a fiver). And then there's the laugh-a-minute Gazza. He beats up his wife, alienates half of Glasgow (twice) with some mock flute-playing and over-doses on kebabs. And guess which offence finally threatens to get him booted off the national team? It's reminiscent of the rows surrounding brilliant writers who are unreconstructed scumballs as human beings. Does the life taint the work? Can one love and respect the so-called "beautiful game" with characters like these among its aristocracy?

This is one conundrum. Another is presented to the woman (and the odd man, to be fair) with no more than a passing interest in

any of this: how can a woman escape the media stereotypes, being neither the Babe Who Knows Her Squads She Does nor the Bird Who Thinks Empowerment Means Dragging Him Off To Woodies During Scotland v Brazil. Many women aspire only to surviving the next month with their love and respect for their partners intact. If you're of the view that a good relationship entails constantly affirming each other, however, I wouldn't be too optimistic, not least because a recent survey by Total Sport magazine concluded that 61 per cent of men find sport "more exciting" than they find their wives or girlfriends. Men spend 21 hours a week on sport: nine hours playing, eight hours watching and four hours "drinking with their sports friends". And that's that. Too bad if it zaps the odd marriage.

Mystifying behaviour, particularly when football could be doing the very opposite of showing fans up as Neanderthals. Not for nothing is this "The Beautiful Game", says Rogan Taylor of Liverpool University's Football Research Unit. In fact, being a football fan could show you to be a student of human nature, interested in relationships, economics, the triumph of the individual over fate . . .

Never mind the 22 guys running around trying to point a ball at an onion bag, he says. "Football is essentially about individual relationships and quite frankly, if you can't interest your partner in the extraordinary circumstances and relationships within it, you're not working hard enough, boys and girls. Look at Roberto Baggio of Italy. With his last penalty kick, he lost the last World Cup final for his country. Since then, he's been transferred from Juventus and been playing low-grade football, with everyone saying he's gone, finished. But look at him now. He's played his way back to being selected for the 22 for Italy. He's also a Buddhist and wears a pigtail. How could that not be interesting?

"Look at the US v Iran match. How could you look at that and not wonder what it will be like - with every Iranian in Europe trying to get up there to support their team against a country they're meant to despise? "The World Cup is the great festival of the world. Its reach is absolutely stupendous. It will have a rolling TV audience of 36 to 40 billion, involving everyone from African village grass huts to the high rises of Japan. What else does this?"

OK, so it's a global-wide event. And there's a duty on everybody to make a bit of an effort. All you non-fans must remember marriage counsellors' advice not to stand in front of the television during a big match to air a gripe. But some things just aren't funny. The British marriage counselling organisation, Relate, is expecting calls to increase by 10 to 15 per cent during the World Cup. And it is particularly worried about the link between domestic violence and the increased alcohol consumption that comes with watching sport. So watch your house.