WE ALL KNOW WHAT IT’S LIKE TO FEEL one of Nietzsche’s eternal recurrences coming on. In married life, everything is going well, yet some familiar prickling at the back of your mind tells you that with gentle inevitability, a furious row will be taking place before nightfall.
Or at some great family gathering, all the vibes are good and yet something in the body language of the reprobate aunt makes it plain that before anyone has gone home she will be making her usual sort of trouble. Or at a party, with a couple you know well, it’s all great fun, but you know from the way she carries herself that before the night is out she will make a drunken pass at a stranger. She’s got form that way.
I have the same feeling at this World Cup. England are playing in Germany — how long before England have to play against Germany? The next clash in this royal and ancient dispute is approaching in slow motion and with dreadful inevitability. I feel it in my water.
I have been staring at the fixtures and the possibilities they throw up. And while the mathematics and the football suggest that there are also other and more likely eventualities, I don’t see how the footballing gods — those beings who combine a taste for drama with an acute sense of humour — can resist throwing England and Germany together again.
If the normal patterns of tournament football apply, England and Germany will meet in the round of 16 — that is to say, next weekend, on either Saturday or Sunday. Each has two victories, both have already qualified. If one finishes first and the other second in their groups, they will meet: if both win or both come second, they will not.
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England play Sweden and need nothing to qualify, while Sweden need a draw. Germany play Ecuador; a draw would suit both. Now it is a fact of tournament life that when a draw suits both sides, a draw often seems to happen. Conspiracy is not necessary. When a match has no great edge to it, a draw is by far the most likely outcome.
A Germany-Ecuador draw means that Ecuador win group A on goal difference. An England-Sweden draw means that England win group B on points. The winners from England’s group play the second-placed team from Germany’s group. That, by my reckoning, makes for a day of reckoning in Stuttgart on Sunday week. It is only right to point out that the Fink Tank disagrees and gives England a 56 per cent chance of playing Ecuador and only a 44 per cent chance of meeting Germany. Figures are designed to filter out fate, humans are not. Me, I can see nothing but Germany.
And against Germany, a game without a draw after 90 minutes is simply not possible. The scores will surely be level again after extra time. The game will be decided by the eternally recurring penalty competition.
No matter where you travel in the world to avoid it, you will find yourself in front of a television showing the two prayer groups in the centre circle while martyr after martyr walks to seek salvation or damnation at the white dot. The long trudge goalwards, the much quicker or much slower return. Then, at the last, the gloved figure cavorting with delight and disappearing under a 22-man embrace while a solitary figure receives the sweetest of hugs from his colleagues, who at least all agree on one thing — that it could have been worse. It could have been me.
Strange how the facts of history are mirrored, twisted and mocked in sport, not once but again and again. Yesterday I saw an England fan marching on Nuremberg with a picture of Churchill on his shirt while a group in the banhofplatz sang that the score in world wars was to 2-0 to Inger-lund. Yet in big tournament finals, the score is 4-1 to Germany.
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After 1966, England lost to West Germany in 1970 in the match that Gordon Banks missed because he was ill; they drew 0-0 with West Germany in 1982, with the result that England went out without losing a match and Germany advanced; in 1990 England lost to West Germany on penalties in the semi-finals; and in the 1996 European Championship, they did the same. The countries are drawn together by some occult footballing force. They met again twice in qualifying for the 2002 World Cup, a 1-0 defeat at home bringing the end of Kevin Keegan as manager, a 5-1 victory away ending the sequence of German advantage but paving the way for a deeper disappointment in the finals, in which England went out in the last eight while a frankly poor Germany team reached the final.
There are two further observations to make on footballing fate and the theory of eternal recurrence. The first is that if England do manage do get past — or even avoid — Germany in the round of 16, a meeting with a rampant Argentina is surely unavoidable. The second is that if England do avoid Germany, there is still a possibility of meeting them. That would be on July 9 in Berlin. In the final. One thing England and Germany haven’t tried yet: sharing a penalty competition for the World Cup itself.