ANGOLA v Portugal

There aren’t many Angolans in London and, to make matters worse, the embassy had decided to bus loads of them over to Germany for the World Cup and give them free tickets. Nice one.

But shortly before their first ever World Cup game - incredibly against their former colonial rulers Portugal - I had some good news: there was an Angolan restaurant in south London.

I had no time to visit to check it out so I gave them a call. “This number has not been recognised,” said the voice on the end of the line. Bu we dashed down there anyway, hoping that it would be open. After all, I always had Plan B: The Africa Bar in Covent Garden.

We got to the restaurant, to find it, not only under a new name, but with a sign on the door: “To whom it may concern, take notice that agents of the landlord have taken possession of these premises.” Plan B it is, we thought. So we dashed back over the river to Covent Garden.

But the Africa Bar was closed; the only sign of life in the Africa Centre was a church service. We didn’t want to disturb them and it was pretty obvious that this was another lead that had gone cold.

Then something unusual happened. Four lads appeared looking confused and talking about Angola. “Are you looking for a place to watch Angola?” I asked. “Yes,” replied their leader, “I’m doing this thing where I try to watch all the World Cup teams with their fans in London…”

“Funny you should say that…” I said. It was like when two groups of explorers meet in the jungle in an old film. At first there’s distrust, then they join forces and go on to greater things.

Jesse (the leader) had one more lead, a bar in Stockwell. We all knew it was controversial because it’s in the heart of Little Portugal but we had no choice. So, battling London Underground line-closures-for-essential-maintenance, we all raced back south of the river, hoping to catch the second half with some Angolans.

We got to the venue at half time, and sure enough there were some Angolans there (admittedly heavily outnumbered by Portuguese, and even by Ecuadorians).

We had a quick look further down the street and were blown away by what we saw: the crowd outside Estrelha – the heart of Little Portugal – was massed 20 deep on the especially wide pavement, curving in a huge arc around the screens and speakers the bar had set up on the pavement. I was here to watch Angola, but found myself drawn irresistibly to this huge crowd of horn and whistle-blowing Portuguese.

But my disloyalty to the Angolan cause was, perversely, rewarded. Although they made up a minority of the crowd, the Angolans at Estrelha were more than making themselves heard, and waving their flags and scarves, particularly a group of teenage Angolan girls screaming loudly a little behind my right ear.

All the top-floor bus passengers who passed by were glued to the action, not on the screens, but on the pavement slightly to their left, a thin blue line of good-natured coppers just about keeping the crowd out of the way of the traffic.

Incredibly, Portugal’s narrow 1-0 win over average opposition was the spark for a huge party on the streets of Stockwell. Cars bedecked with ever-bigger Portuguese flags drove round and round the block, tooting their horns incessantly. Some sort of Portuguese jeep/samba/booty-shaking thing was going on round the corner. People were spilling out onto the street to celebrate in front of buses.

If anyone was just passing by and couldn’t get through, they couldn’t use their horn to get people out of their way. Everyone would just think they were joining in the celebrations.

As one of the coppers said, “What will they be like if they actually win the cup?” I could still hear them celebrating from Vauxhall station 45 minutes after the final whistle.

And the Angolans could be proud of their boys’ performance too. Everyone’s a winner.

I wasn’t sure if I’d just been supporting Angola, or Portugal, or both. One thing I did know was that I’d be back as often as my schedule would permit.

It’s on days like these that I think London really is the best city in the world: where else would we have found so many Dutch, Iranians, Angolans and Portuguese getting so passionate. Who said New York? Get out of my sight.