Brian Viner: Flags, food, feelgood factor – and the football has only just begun

The Last Word

(AFP/Getty)

Ever since Samuel Johnson called it the last refuge of a scoundrel, patriotism has awakened more condemnation than congratulation in this green and pleasant land of ours.

In the last few decades especially its more obvious manifestations, notably the flying of the flag of St George, have been sequestered by the extreme, or quite extreme, right. For any good liberals driving through English suburbia in their Honda Civics, a St George's Cross fluttering from a flagpole in a tidy front garden is interpreted as a sure indication, if not of BNP sympathies, then of Ukip membership, or of Tory convictions in alignment with those of the late Enoch Powell, or at the very least, of an affection for Jeremy Clarkson.

Except, that is, during the football World Cup, and to a lesser extent the European Championship. These are the only periods when English folk of irreproachably liberal sensibilities – among them, we can safely assume, lots of Independent readers – join the hang-'ems, flog-'ems and send-'em-homes by flying the red-and-white flag of St George on their cars, or even Blu-tacking it to their bedroom windows, facing out.

For a few weeks every fourth summer, as long as England have qualified, it's acceptable even for those with the most liberal or even republican sensibilities, for people who to make their own hummus and watch Channel 4 News, to be flag-waving patriots. It's one of the things I like most about the World Cup. I bought my £2 car flags yesterday, on a trip to the Co-op to buy extra-virgin olive oil, and I didn't even have a child in tow. They now flap proudly from my Mini, and nobody except the most narrow-minded liberal (which is not, alas, the oxymoron it ought to be) will watch me drive by and think me a Powellite or a Clarksonist.

There are plenty of other things I like about the World Cup, too. One is the way in which commercial operations that have nothing to do with football, or indeed sport, try desperately to clamber aboard the bandwagon. The other day I read a monthly food magazine featuring a whole series of recipes geared to England's group games against the USA, Algeria and Slovenia. The idea was for readers to prepare food associated with the country of England's opponents, and if you know anyone who intends to embrace this eccentric scheme, make sure you bag an invitation either today (hamburgers and Vermont baked beans) or next Friday for lamb with couscous, because on 23 June it's a late lunch of Slovenian dandelion salad.

The point, I suppose, is that the World Cup is about so much more than football. It's about food and flags and feelgood factors and even some things not beginning with F. As for the tangential matter of who is actually going to win the thing, I see that none of the experts agrees with me that, my patriotic flags notwithstanding, the Netherlands represent the best value at 10-1. Of course, this may be why they are experts and I am not, but I refuse to be put off by the idea that the Dutch are serial under-achievers. So were the Spanish, apparently, and look what became of them. Whatever, if Van Persie, Robben and co do make it to the final, it'll be open house at my place. I'll be roasting old chestnuts.

Sadness over Rafa's exit is felt across a city

As far as I'm aware, Jose Mourinho has not yet pronounced on the subject of Rafa Benitez following him into San Siro as manager of Internazionale. But I fancy that Jose is tickled pink, not because he thinks that Rafa will live up to his extraordinary legacy of success, but because he knows damn well that he won't.

Meanwhile, some of those Evertonians who claimed victory when the club's plans to move to a new stadium outside the municipal boundaries were scuppered, must now admit defeat. More than a few waggish Toffeemen suggested that with the Kirkby project off the agenda, the KEIOC (Keep Everton in Our City) campaign should change its name, to KRIOC (Keep Rafa In Our City).

The logic was that as long as Benitez remained in charge on the other side of Stanley Park, that elusive 19th league title would always stay out of reach, for the want, so the Spaniard himself used to say with no apparent irony, despite having spent nearly £300m in six years, of "three or four top players".

The dog ate my fixture list, Sir

The head of games at my sons' school is a passionate rugby and cricket man, who can scarcely bring himself even to articulate the effete word "football". This might be why school cricket fixtures are suddenly coming thicker and faster than at any point since the season began, and also why some of the boys, knowing what will happen to them if they cite the World Cup as an excuse to cry off, are having a torrid time with verrucas. Apparently it's also a particularly dangerous time of year to be a great-aunt; so much more useful than grandmothers, because they're not rationed to two. At any rate, you wouldn't believe the number of funerals going on.