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My daughter’s verdict was ‘lame!’ She wasn’t talking about the football; sport is not something that registers big on her radar, not even the world cup. She was referring to the quality of the male supporters in the pub last night. Her friends had persuaded her that their local London pub would be a good place to watch some cute men, watching the footie. The outcome: she was disappointed with the quality of the men and she didn’t even know the result until I enlightened her this morning. Even then she was more interested in talking about her friends boob job! The rest of the country restricted their disappointment to the men on the pitch. So it was a night of disappointments all round.

What was wrong with England last night? They only had to beat Algeria. Yes, the Algerians passed pretty well at times but they are a much lower ranked team than England, don’t have their stars and never once looked like scoring. There were no explanations: Fabio could not explain it. Gerrard could not explain it. Rooney couldn’t control the ball and then lashed out at the fans for booing the team off the pitch. David James was sarcastic about the manager. Then a fan broke through security into the changing room and had a go at David Beckham, just after Princes Harry and William had been in there.

It was a fiasco of epic ‘Mike Bassett England Manager’ proportions. If you have never seen it, I highly recommend watching it before Wednesday. It is a hilarious look at what it is like to be an England fan. The highs of expectations and the lows of gallant failure and an insistence on the bloody 4-4-2 formation. All this under a no-hoper English manager promoted above his abilities. But we have Fabio, so where has it all gone wrong? Maybe when he insisted on the team watching The Battle of Algiers before the match? Or when he imposed a sex ban before the tournament. They just all want to lose so they can go home and have sex again???

I personally blame the BBC’s Five Live commentary team. The negativity they were transmitting last night was infecting the whole nation. They were upping the anti with every kick of the ball, slagging the England players off at every opportunity and promoting Algeria to world-beaters. When David James actually made the one save he had to make, they had a dig about the way he caught the ball. England were: appalling, shocking, inexcusable, lamentable, dire, dreadful, lacklustre etc etc. Then it got more bizarre when I thought Chris Waddle kept saying ‘pass to the white man.’ Shocking northern racism or just a strange Georgie way of telling the players to pass to the wide man? Why can’t they be like the Greek commentators, completely biased in favour of their team, cheering on every decision that goes their way and encouraging the players to cheat, dive and win!