Matt's World Cup Diary
Day 9 – No games

A bit of time to wander round shows that against our previous expectations Essen is actually quite a nice place and the City Centre is a much more relaxed friendly place than many equivalent industrial towns in England. In fact there is a total absence of hoodies and large groups of lads wandering around as you’d find at home.

Back to Café Solo in Essen to watch the England game – the choice of location is not entirely unrelated to the presence of several cute waitresses along with copious amounts of beer, ice cream and a big screen to watch the football on.

However the game is a major disappointment and Mark spends much of it doing a Sudoku in the paper, the fact that the screen cuts out for a couple of seconds as Beckham scores is almost a signal that such skill does not belong in this game.

Heading off to another bar to watch Portugal v Holland we decide beforehand that we don’t really care who we get, but a few sendings off and injuries would be nice. Of course the football purists would say the ref ruined the game, utter bollocks – a mad ref always makes a game – cracking entertainment.