A World Cup only really starts when the 'legends' start to play

Has anyone counted the number, or calculated the sheer range, of vested interests in England winning the World Cup?

Earlier this week, elsewhere in these pages, I wrote about the Lithuanian woman who works behind the till at a petrol station near where I live in rural Herefordshire and desperately wants England to go all the way. She doesn't know the difference between Wayne Rooney and Wayne Gretsky but she bought a Toshiba flat-screen television a few weeks ago, seduced by a promotion which offered a full refund in the event of Fabio Capello's men returning with the trophy, so she has £400 riding on their fortunes.

At the other end of the nous scale are all the ageing football men for whom a series of nice little corporate earners depend on England staying in the competition for as long as possible. To watch the Slovenia game my brother-in-law was invited to the Barbican cinema in London, hired for the occasion by a big American law firm. It was a little strange, he reports, to sit in plush cinema seats watching England, when the last time you were there was for a Jacques Tati season. Mind you, give Peter Crouch a pipe and a bicycle and he could be the great man's son.