ENGLAND play Mexico in the small hours tomorrow, and despite everything you’re going to watch it. Here’s how you’ll prepare and suffer the consequences:
4pm-5pm
Nervy preparations begin with a work-related excuse not to go to the pub. In order to get an afternoon nap in, you eat an enormous roast dinner and wash it down with three pints.
5pm-6pm
Bloated on the verge of a food coma, you try to prepare for tomorrow’s working day by putting a wash on, including your lucky retro England shirt. You’ll get it out later.
6pm-7pm
Propelled by early-onset hangover urgency, you decide the kids should be in bed early and f**k Thomas Tuchel. You read them a Marcus Rashford Breakfast Club Adventures story and reflect that he’s as skilled at writing as he is at scoring a penalty in the 2020 Euros final. The kids are allowed to take devices to bed.
7pm-8pm
You try to nap, but are interrupted by constant texts about possible team line-ups, injuries, and excuses for missing work tomorrow. The gnawing dread that your excuses are as flimsy and unbelievable as your prediction of ‘4-1’ is inescapable.
8pm-9pm
To relax you turn on the TV and stare mindlessly at a Harlan Coben thing for an hour, occasionally responding to whatever your partner is saying with ‘Yeah’, ‘I dunno,’ ‘I think he’s the baddy,’ and ‘They’ve had no time to acclimatise, it’s basically cheating.’
9pm-10pm
You crack open a bottle and watch Brazil versus Norway to get in the mood. The level of skill from both teams is frightening. By your second beer all you can think about is how it would be a mercy not to play the victor of this.
10pm-11pm
Four beers in, you’re feeling great. Awake, alert, ready for a match that doesn’t begin for hours yet. You’re on your phone Googling tickets and flights, deciding your credit card can take it, when stats about Mexico’s win percentage at their home stadium arrive just as the team is announced. Anxiety initiates an immediate bowel movement.
11pm-12am
You realise you’ve missed a meal, so you make an overly elaborate sandwich, with crisps, and dips, and a whisky chaser. ‘Football’s coming home’ is playing in your mind, on a loop, somehow mockingly. Drown it out with more Harlan Coben.
12am-1am
Your TV turns off automatically and wakes with a defibrillator-sized jolt five minutes before kick-off. You’re not ready, it wasn’t supposed to be like this; indigestion, drunk, alone, your lucky England shirt still wet in the machine. Try to get your game head on, haunted by Haaland.
1am-2am
Game on. Somehow you’ve had all the beers, but Jameson’s is fine from the bottle. The football is not riveting. Your heart hammers regardless. During hydration breaks you piss in the garden.
2am-3am
You’ve sat through the bollocky halftime punditry and given yourself an aching thumb messaging about channels and the hard press. Wish you could go to bed and find out in the morning but the group chat won’t let you. Snack on guacamole and tortilla chips.
3am-4am
You’ve made it. Your head’s banging, your stomach’s lurching, you’re up for work in four hours and will be sweating Scotch on the commute. The group chat has degenerated into outright abuse. You lie in bed wide awake after hours of footballing anguish and all you think about is who the murderer is in the Harlan Coben thing.
