UKRAINE v Tunisia

Far too late, I realised I had the same problem with Tunisia that I’d had with Serbia & Montenegro. Their match against Ukraine clashed with Saudi Arabia’s tie with Spain.

To make matters worse, the Saudi game was on terrestrial TV, while Tunisia were on digital. And the only place I had left to find Tunisians was Edgware Road, where many cafés would probably be showing Saudi instead.

But Saudi are definitely out and Tunisia will go through if they win, I thought. Surely some places would be showing the Tunisia game? No, it turned out. Every café we could find was showing Saudi v Spain, including one that had apparently been rocking for Tunisia v Spain, and none of them had a large crowd anyway. I wondered if London’s small Tunisian population was hiding from me somewhere. I had failed again.

We took a large amount of consolation from the fact that we were now free to go and watch the game with our new friends at the Ukrainian social club. They’d called us the night before to invite us along. Apparently there would be a bigger crowd there and they were showing the game on the big screen in the ballroom.

We’d promised to get there for some of the match, but now we could arrive even earlier. We got there just before half-time. They had the pennants out again, which I now realised were blue and yellow napkins stapled to some string.

There was certainly a much bigger crowd than there had been for the Spain game, with more young fans; although the familiar older men were there again too. The ballroom was like a large school hall, but with cool Ukrainian shields and things on the walls.

Apparently they had been playing quite well so far, but the atmosphere was muted: I thought there must be some nerves because defeat would put them out and it was still 0-0. They needed some breathing space.

There was sporadic excitement whenever Ukraine created a chance, and polite applause for any Tunisian bookings, and then celebrations when Tunisia’s Ziad Jaziri was harshly sent off.

My new friend Yuri magnanimously mourned Jaziri’s red card, worrying that it would make the game less of a spectacle. “But surely it’s good if it helps Ukraine win?” I asked. He wasn’t convinced.

And he was right about the spectacle: the second half was dull, although one of the great pleasures I take from the World Cup is enjoying really dull games. I suppose I felt right at home supporting a team that was playing so prosaically. And it was fitting that their goal should come from a dubious Andriy Shevchenko penalty.

Most of the crowd didn’t care how the goal came, celebrating loudly, the younger ones cheering and jumping around, while the older men were happy to noisily bang bottles on tables, and one of them later shouted “Handball!” when a Tunisian player was booked for grabbing his opponent by the testicles.

I don’t know if the many Shevchenko shirt-wearers in the crowd would agree (it reminded me of Spartacus: “I’m Shevchenko!” “I’m Shevchenko!” “I’m Shevchenko!”…), but I thought Ukraine started to play much better after Shevchenko was substituted, and there was excitement as they started to create chances.

Yuri agreed, admitting he wouldn’t play Shevchenko, because the others play better when they have responsibility thrust on them without him. Now we would find out if manager Oleg Blokhin thought the same, because Ukraine were through to the second round.

As we emerged blinking into the late afternoon sunlight, we wondered if the good burghers of this fine neighbourhood knew anything about the raucous, vodka-and-footie-fuelled Ukrainian excitement going on under their feet.