GERMANY v Poland

I was all set to watch Tunisia take on Saudi Arabia in the only Tunisian restaurant in London, but they decided they wouldn’t be showing the game after all, with the owner jetting off to Germany to watch the game there.

My only Plan B was to check out the action on Edgware Road, but I only found one café with much of a crowd. And, as one Tunisian fan there told me, it was about half Tunisian and half Saudi, so I decided to regroup and try and catch a future Tunisian game.

And I’d heard that there might be a Saudi gathering at the bar in one of Park Lane’s swanky hotels, so I prepared to switch sides and raced down there, only to find hardly anyone watching the game.

I had one more potential Saudi venue up my sleeve, but it was too far away now that the game was well underway. And that’s how I missed a game for the first time in the tournament.

So I got to the Germany venue with plenty of time to spare, and took a well-earned seat and a Weiss bier in a tall, football themed glass as I prepared to support a team playing against someone I’d already supported for the first time in the tournament. After my hectic pub-hopping week I couldn’t face one of the big fat two-pint glasses with a huge head favoured by the Germans.

My glass had an Argentina flag on it and said they’d won the World Cup twice. I wondered if they just had glasses for teams that had won the cup fewer times than Germany. I couldn’t see the Scotland glass with a proud boast of no World Cups, but I was pretty sure that there probably would be one.

Authenticity’s all well and good, but when it comes to a German bar, you really want blatantly non-German staff in lederhosen and wench outfits, and oom-pah music; and that’s what this venue provided, along with jelly-wrestling beer wenches (although not tonight). Female customers can even join in to battle it out for a £100 beer tab. It’s funny; the things you never realised were German.

And then some men turned up with big shiny instruments and big funny hats. A real oom-pah band! And they even played the theme from Star Wars! I was loving it.

The boisterous crowd proved they were real football fans when they largely ignored the pre-kick off Old Trafford-style announcement for everyone to take a seat so that others could see.

The Poles were getting stuck into the Germans on the pitch, generating a noisy atmosphere in the pub, and there were loud cheers for the frequent Polish yellow cards and for a good chance on the stroke of half-time.

But I suspected the fans were putting a brave face on their struggle to score, trying to appear impassive. As the game went on and Poland went down to ten men the Germans created more and more chances, but the fans were repeatedly frustrated by Celtic’s Artur Boruc, who was playing a blinder between the Polish sticks, and probably playing himself into a transfer away from Celtic Park.

And then Germany hit the bar twice in the last minute and the crowd thought they’d scored when they had the ball in the net; but it was ruled out for off side. And then they did score, and let their mask slip with delirious celebrations. They really did care.