It was a few moments before the whistle blew on the opening match of the 2006 World Cup when a text message arrived from a colleague. ‘Well, here we go!’ it read. I rolled my eyes, slipped my phone back into my pocket, and left the message unanswered. 

Why the grumpiness? Because the message came from a man who normally took no interest whatsoever in the game, except to occasionally mock people like me for being daft enough to enjoy a ‘silly game with silly men kicking a ball around’. Yet here he was, transformed by the arrival of the World Cup into an enthusiastic student of… ‘footie’. 

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He wasn’t alone. Another football-sceptic colleague became inordinately invested in the office World Cup sweepstake, while a third underwent an overnight conversion from someone who barely knew football existed into someone wandering around the office whistling that bloody Baddiel and Skinner song. I’m not going to lie, I resented all three of them enormously. 

Football supporters can be strangely possessive about the game. Perhaps it’s inevitable. We spend years accumulating knowledge, building rituals, establishing loyalties and proving, mostly to ourselves, that we belong. We endure long........

© The Spectator