Ian McMillan: Why World Cup hope is worse than despair

Admittedly because I'm half Scottish (the kilt half) I'm more of a Barnsley fan than I am an England fan but I've been enjoying this World Cup so far; as a chap who likes translated poetry and what they used to call World Music and what they used to call Foreign Food, I like seeing the nations of the world coming together for sport; it cements my internationalism, my feeling that we're a globe not a collection of states. I'm naive but I really do think the World Cup is a festival of football.

I didn't enjoy the last couple of hours, though, on Sunday. I was looking forward to it, as well; I tell myself that I wasn't caught up in the hype but I was, oh I was.

I read the papers and they told me that man for man we could beat them. I listened to the radio and the pundits were hopeful: this was a young and inexperienced German side and we were the golden generation. It would be like putting the Bay City Rollers up against The Rolling Stones. ("He'll not have paid for his ticket," my wife said when she saw Mick Jagger in the crowd).

I watched the TV and they told me that history was on our side, that some kind of footballing fate was going to intervene and despite myself I was moved and excited. Then even Brian Blessed shouting got me all choked up.

I was ready, I was really ready. I had a little tickle in the pit of my stomach and I nervously went to the toilet several times before we started. I felt like amazing things were about to happen. I sat down

and my palms were sweating with anticipation and delight. And then, as it often does in these situations, real life took over. The caviar

faded into crisps that stuck to the roof of my mouth.

After Germany's third goal went in, my wife stood up from the settee and said she was going into the garden and although I protested and said, "Don't leave me to suffer on my own", I wish I'd gone with her.

I could have helped her to weed until I picked something that looked like a weed but turned out to be a flower and then I'd be banished to the top of the garden to sit and read translated poetry in the shade.

The thing I like about sport is also the thing that kills me about sport: it happens in real time. It's not a film with flashbacks. It's not a play where a scene change can send you 10 years into the past or a 100 miles to the west.

The visceral excitement of sport is that it's taking place in front of

your eyes and that at its best it combines elements of endeavour and tragedy and drama and farce and athleticism and cleverness and bravery. I didn't see much of that on Sunday.

Of course, Lampard's goal was a goal, and they'll have to bring in some kind of goal line technology but that's not really the point.

The point is my little football-mad grandson Thomas, who, as I've written before, has been dutifully sticking his World Cup stickers in

his book, who bought me an England mug and an England shirt for Father's Day last week and who stood proud in his little England shirt the day they limped past Slovenia. He'll be here soon for his Sunday tea, disappointed like the rest of us. Will he have his England kit on ? I don't know. He'll still love football but maybe not quite as much.

Oh, we'll recover, we always do, and it'll soon be the football season and I'll get my Barnsley season ticket out and take Thomas to the match and the months will stretch ahead of us and we'll enjoy the ride. We'll know that Barnsley will win a few games that on paper they should have lost and lose a few that they should have won but we'll know in our hearts that we have to be realistic; we may never win the Champions League.

And maybe that's the trouble with World Cups; they make you hope. They make you think you might do it, this time. They make you think you're growing flowers when all you're doing is plucking weeds. And as they say, it's the hope that kills you. Never mind: come on Barnsley! Make me believe in football again!