World Cup 2010 - Day 25

Cloud cuckoo land

If we hadn’t have lost against France, they say,
Not been cheated by Henry’s handball,
Perhaps we’d have had a good chance, they say,
Of doing quite well overall.

We’d have breezed to the knockout stage, they say,
And then ‘twould depend on the draw.
From there, it is tricky to gauge, they say,
The quarters at least, maybe more.

If we played to our highest potential,
We may have done fairly okay
Though one fact is not inconsequential
In guessing the length of our stay.

We finished behind the Italians,
When qualification was done.
We only got silver medallions,
Twice drawing against them one-one.

We got beaten at home by the French, you know,
Lost one-nil at home, drew away,
We’re digging ourselves a large trench, you know,
To be happy about our display.

And Domenech’s heroes and Italy?
They both ended up in the soup.
Both exited sadly and bitterly
Right down at the foot of each group.

So these hypothetical chances, my friend,
Of joining the creme de la creme,
Wouldn’t be any higher than France’s, my friend,
And just look at what happened to them.

And so to the inevitable question - how would we have done if we'd been there? General consensus seems to be we'd have got to the quarter finals at least, which is about as ridiculous as those who said we'd have won the World Cup in 2002 if Roy Keane hadn't have been sent home.