England staring into abyss

Day 14. The post mortem. The recriminations. The invective. The bitterness. The Scapegoat: Kevin Keegan. What's worse, an audience of 21.6 million (plus another 872 million, or so, in pubs the length and breadth of England) had heard him utter the already immortal line on ITV . . . "when a game goes like this, Brian, there's only one team that'll win it and that's England".

The Fantasy Football people on ITV blamed him. The callers to Channel Four's Under the Moon wanted him hung, drawn and eighthed.

He may now even be dropped by ITV for their highlights of the Colombia game and replaced by a safe pair of hands. Ron Atkinson's hands. (That's Ron "we'll beat Romania easy" Atkinson). "That's the last time we do a charity record for you Romanians," said gutted Oasis crooner, Noel Gallagher, when he turned up on Fantasy Football.

Meanwhile, over on Match of the Day, Jimmy Hill was upset. Very upset. And was fighting with Martin O'Neill, again. "What about Friday, Jimmy," asked Gary Lineker, keen to look positively to the future. "We daren't be beaten, it's life or death," said Jimmy solemnly, in an unfortunate reference to a match involving Colombia.

Jimmy could have done with tuning in to Sky News yesterday afternoon, when they spoke to psychologist Dr Niall Campbell about the effect defeat would have on England supporters. (Well, it is a 24 hour news' station and that's a lot of hours to fill).

"We're looking over the edge of the abyss after building up to this for four years and now maybe we'll not make it," said the psychologist, sounding like he needed a bit of counselling himself.

"Looking over the edge of the abyss? You wouldn't use language like that with a patient would you - you'd send them over the edge with that kind of talk," said an alarmed Simon McCoy. "But that's the way they feel," insisted Dr Campbell. "And what happens if we get knocked out - are we looking at suicides?" asked Simon. Ah lads.

"Romania out-techniqued England, didn't they," concluded Bob Wilson, introducing a new verb to the English language, before settling down for the match between Italy and Austria. Full time, Italy had won 2-1. "But they don't look a real, well, slick-oiled machinery at the minute, Bob," cautioned Barry Venison.

The weather seemed to be getting to Ger Canning too, as he commentated on Cameroon v Chile. "We've seen little of Salas or Zamarano so far, Cameroon have been taking the tactic of trying to saturate the starvation to the front two," he said. Or maybe he's been hanging out with Daveed Ginola in the wine bars of Paris.

Cameroon were `done' by the ref, who disallowed their `winning' goal for some reason best known to himself. "That is so unjust, it makes my blood boil," fumed Jimmy Hill later in the evening. Uggh, hate agreeing with Jimmy.

Scotland v Morocco. Jimmy was wearing a St Andrew's cross bow tie, as if the Scots weren't tense enough. Out came the teams, Jim Leighton with his eyebrows laden down with Vaseline again. Had wondered what this was about until Under the Moon's Danny Kelly explained it was to prevent the sweat from Jim's brow dribbling down in to his contact lenses. Oh, right. Eh, hang on: contact lenses? The goalkeeper's wearing contact lenses? This can't be good.

Morocco scored, Salaheddine Bassir squeezing the ball between the Vaseline and the near post. And they scored again. And yet again, and deservedly qualified for the second round after Brazil's comfortable thrashing of Norway in the night's other match. Or so we assumed. They celebrated and hugged and whooped and cheered on the pitch at the end of the game.

And what extraordinary pictures they were as disbelieving Morocco players had their celebrations cut cruelly short as they were told that Brazil had actually been beaten by Norway. Norway beat Brazil? The football equivalent of a paint-by-numbers picture beating a Picasso in an art competition. Funny old game. Except poor old Morocco weren't laughing.