Why we're singing the same old song

Perhaps the clincher is Rio Ferdinand saying: "Well, I asked Ronaldinho if he meant it, and he smiled." Yeah, right. Again: if you've watched Ronaldinho at all, you'll know smiling is basically his only expression. So would yours be if you could play football like that. He was grinning ear-to-ear when he got sent off, for God's sake.

But never mind: it's been a great World Cup, even if it's stalling a bit in these latter stages as previouslyflowing teams start to feel the fear, and even if God - who I'm starting to suspect doesn't even like football - has given the Germans a virtual bye to the semi-finals.

Some have complained that the actual quality of the football has not been that great, and there is some truth in that. I think this is the first World Cup to have really been affected by the overdevelopment of club football at the top level in recent years. Obviously, it used to be the case that playing for your country was a step up from playing for your club, but, as I'm sure Roy Keane could tell you, not any more. The fact is the top European clubs, World Star XIs as they are, are now better than most - I would say, all - international sides.

Real Madrid would piss this tournament; so probably would Arsenal; I think even Chelsea would easily make the quarterfinals, where they would, of course, lose inconsistently to perhaps Turkey. It seems to me undeniable that the quality of the football is now higher in the Champions League than in the World Cup. Luckily, the drama is still greater. And, besides, I've so many memories to treasure; here are just some of them:

1. Meeting a naked Jim Rosenthal in the hotel sauna in Niigata. Jim once told me, on a separate occasion, that he definitely isn't Jewish, which at the time I thought was perhaps the only example of evolution defying the Trades Description Act.

Well, on the evidence of our sauna meeting, someone else didn't believe him either.

2.At the Argentina game, hearing the England fans singing "Where's your peso gone?" Who knew the travelling support had their finger so on the pulse of economic affairs?

3. On slightly the same note, being handed an internet version of Three Lions doing the rounds post the French exit, which substituted the line "I know that was then/But it could be again" for "Their mascot's a hen/They elected Le Pen."

4. Sitting in a tiny Japanese restaurant watching the Germany-USA quarter-final on the smallest TV ever made, with three Mancunians, who told me that they'd met "that bird off GMTV who goes out with Craig Brown". They were astonished that the ex-Scotland manager had landed on his sexual feet quite so much.

I said, perhaps unfairly, that I couldn't imagine Craig was exactly a monster in bed; and one of them said: "Yeah, arse like a bee's wing" and then vibrated his hand up and down very quickly.

5. Walking past two American fans, outside the Ireland-Germany game, and hearing one of them say, without explanation, "Dude was missing a toe!?"

All the fans have been great, but especially the England fans, always the most targeted. One Japanese politician, I found out recently, had been saying before the tournament that, due to the unbridled lusts of the Anglo-Saxon, government money needed to be put aside for the number of unwanted children that were to be born post the World Cup.

This fear has proved to be unfounded, although to be fair, there were rumours that Mick Jagger was going to come out if we got through to the semis.

For those well-behaved fans shuffling out of the stadium on Friday evening, riven, as so often before by anti-climax, all that was left for them to hold on to was that most English of attitudes: resilience.

On one of the coaches back to the city, a fan broke off his despair about the present side for a minute to tell me about Wayne Rooney, a 16-year-old about to break into the first team at Everton, who he was convinced was going to be the man to turn England's fortunes around in the not-so-distant future.

"He's like Mark Hughes with pace," he said, warming to his theme. It was strange but somehow comforting already to be thinking about the post-Beckham generation: whatever dreams end, football always goes on.

I continued in this reverie until he said: "They say he's the best player ever to have worn an Everton shirt," which obviously made me think he wasn't that good. See you in Portugal 2004.