only a game

Wimbledon goes into its second week today. It's warm and sunny and for many the perfect day to spend mulling around the grounds of the famous All England Croquet and Lawn Tennis Club, drinking ice-cold Pimms and eating strawberries with Jersey cream. There are benches everywhere; people sit down to read the weekend papers and get a tan. Some even watch the matches on the courts.

I was asked to join that leisurely pleasure yesterday. Despite its renown and upper-class traditions, Wimbledon has evolved into a great party for everyone – though the rules are still very strict and rowdy behavior is not tolerated. Despite temptation, I declined the invitation. The Queen's visit had already happened, as had the greatest match ever. John Isner beat Nicolas Mahut after more than eleven hours, with a basketball-like fifth-set score of 70:68. What more could there be?

From the pictures on TV, you wouldn't guess much was happening at all. Spectator are seated peacefully, almost sedately, as if enjoying an opera at Covent Garden. There are no flags, no screams and hardly any cheers. If there is love for the game, people carry it inside, confidently.

Things will look much different this afternoon in the rest of London. Tennis will be worlds away outside the universe of white down south. Today at three, England faces Germany in the second round of the football World Cup. It's the mother of all matches apparently. Not even the Falkland War foes Argentina elicit such an emotional response in English fans.

In 1966, the English team won the Cup at home. Their victory over Germany in the final included a goal (known for all eternity as the Wembley goal) where the ball didn't cross the goal line. That's how Germans saw it, anyway, and they have never forgiven the English. Instead they started the tradition of beating England every time they've met in European Championships or World Cups, and they've won both trophies a couple of times each. The English have never again won a thing.

Nevertheless, English newspapers and especially tabloids have always been quick to verbally trounce the Germans in the run up to a game and bestow premature greatness on the home team. Knowing the English predilection for self-deprecation, these martial words of certain glory may sound strange, but they probably arose from a silently felt certainty that they were doomed. In other words, the English were ridiculing themselves even before they had reason to.

This is why I find this year's press a bit frightening. It seems that for the first time, the English feel they have a realistic chance of beating Germany in the game and don't need to win the war of words before. The Sun, the most linguistically aggressive of the tabloids, had a picture on its front page yesterday showing the German team on a safari bus watching three cute little lions from safe distance. "Germany afraid of Three Lions", the caption read, with reference to England's sobriquet. On Friday already, The Guardian had titled, without even a hint of fanatical home support, "The good news: We're through. The bad news: Germany's next." All this verbal foreplay was topped yesterday by The Times, which titled, in German, on their front page, "Entspannt Euch, es ist doch nur ein Spiel (relax, it's only a game)".

Relax? Only a game?? Are you kidding me? I know I'll be joining the crowds this afternoon, in some pub somewhere, and will be glued to the big screen. I might take my flag and wear my black-red-and-yellow plastic flower necklace; maybe I'll even paint my face. Like everyone else outside of Wimbledon this afternoon, I'll be screaming my heart out so my team play theirs out. Because it's not just a game. It's football, it's the World Cup, and it's about time to remind the English of some fine traditions.