INTRODUCTION

On a street like any other in West London there’s a pub that, at first glance, looks as English as Jimmy Hill. But step inside on international week and you could be forgiven for thinking you’ve been teleported four or five hundred miles north to Glasgow, Edinburgh or, more likely, Aberdeen.

There are tens of thousands of us Scots in London, quietly toiling away as barmen, accountants, salesmen or, more usually, high-ranking politicians. And when Scotland are playing the Rob Roy heaves with the massed ranks of the Tartan Army. It’s boisterous and noisy. You’ll have Tennent’s spilt on you. You’ll be lucky if you can see any of the game on any of the screens, unobscured by hulking Highlanders or lanky Lowlanders’ heids. But when (or if) Scotland score, you’ll know about it. Your eardrums will ache for hours afterwards. In other words, it’s brilliant.

It was particularly brilliant when Scotland beat Holland 1-0 in the first leg of their Euro 2004 play-off. We nearly took the roof off when we bulged the Dutch onion bag. How we gasped for the rest of the game as we somehow held the Orange hordes at bay. But as anyone with so much as a passing interest in international football knows, that sort of result is sadly now the exception rather than the rule for the boys in dark blue. As much was clear in the return leg, where we were lucky to lose 6-0.

And, of course, Scotland didn’t even make the play-offs for the 2006 World Cup. How great it would have been to cheer the lads on for all three games from the pub. Of course, I was now free to enjoy the tournament without worrying about us embarrassing ourselves against Costa Rica or Iran again (at least Peru and Morocco weren’t going to be there). But as a man who can’t watch a kids’ game at the local summer fair without taking sides, I needed someone to support.

Or better still, everyone. This was my chance to become the most fickle fan of all time. Changing your team once in your lifetime is one time too many. But what if I was to change every day, sometimes more than once, to support 32 teams in a month? And could I watch each of those teams as if it was a home fixture in London? In pubs, bars, restaurants and social clubs where Ghanaians, Croatians and Argentines who live in London would watch their games? I assumed many venues would be easy to find but I knew I would have my work cut out with others. I thought Portugal, Poland and Brazil would be easy, but does London have an Angolan community? What about Paraguay? And what sort of venue would Saudis choose to watch the game? Mind you, given my congested fixture list, any break from alcohol would prove very welcome.

So my interest in every qualification group was suddenly magnified and I found myself supporting teams I’d never previously had an interest in, but whose large London communities would make my life easier. How I cheered on Australia (but considering how their play-off opponents, Uruguay, had kicked Scotland up and down the park in 1986, it felt only right). How aggressively I backed Trinidad and Tobago against Bahrain. But it didn’t all go to plan. Ireland’s meek performance against Switzerland was a particular blow. Nigeria would have been far easier than Angola. And I was probably the only non-Turk in London lamenting those bad boys’ defeat by those efficient Swiss.

India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and New Zealand’s perennial football underachievement (I blame cricket and rugby) cost me a large chunk of London’s population. But I was still confident that I could find enough Ecuadorians, Ivorians and Ukrainians to make it all possible. After all, London has a growing Latin American population (apparently). And all those people who I assume are probably Nigerian could well be from Togo: there’s only Benin in between anyway (a quick glance at a map confirmed).

And what would I learn? How does Japanese football fandom differ from American? Korean from Iranian? Swedish from Serb? Does London even have a Costa Rican community? Fuelled with misplaced optimism, rusty Spanish and a tenuous grasp on Italian, I swapped my passport for my A-Z and set out to find out.

Coverage of each game will follow on a match-by-match basis, updated daily, starting with Costa Rica versus Germany and Poland versus Ecuador on 9 June...