Insure yourself against World Cup heartache!
Published:
I WAS lucky enough to be in Amsterdam reporting on Scotland’s World Cup qualifier with Holland.
The Tartan Army descended on the city in their thousands, only to be disappointed.
I have a great way to keep their spirits up on away trips, even if the Scots lose.
Insure yourself against the pain of seeing your team miss out on the World Cup!
Sounds crazy, but it has already been done.
An English fan insured himself for £1 million against the trauma of seeing the Auld Enemy knocked out of the early stages of the 2006 World Cup.
He paid £100 plus £5 tax for the World Cup All Risks policy.
If England had crashed out early he would have had to provide medical evidence showing that he has suffered severe mental trauma.
The insurers were on to a winner, I am also so confident England will not win the World Cup again I would be willing to shell out £1m to back it up.
The biggest odds that British bookies have ever offered 20,000,000-1.
That bet was for Elvis Presley to ride into town on Shergar and then play Lord Lucan in the Wimbledon final.
There is more chance of that than John Terry lifting the World Cup in South Africa next summer.
If Scotland fail to make the World Cup I will have evidence of my trauma – hair loss through pulling it out and red eyes through greetin’ too much.
The last time Scotland qualified for the World Cup in 1998 I had a head of flowing hair, now I am as bald as the Fir Park pitch.
Insurers were going to offer the same deal for Aberdeen in the Scottish Cup, but after the humiliation to Dunfermline it would have cost too much.
The organisers of South Africa 2010 will have to really pull the stops out to top recent opening ceremonies.
Unfortunately, African nations do not have a strong track record in extravagant openings.
In the 1988 African Nations Cup in Casablanca, the opening match was delayed by nearly an hour after a parachutist missed the pitch and became tangled up in the floodlights.
He hung upside down for 45 minutes.
After that long period of inactivity, Rangers were considering snapping him up to lead their front-line.
In an alternative World Cup, robots have been playing against one another.
The standard is so high Japanese robotics experts at Keio University, Tokyo claim that their robots will beat humans at football by 2075.
They expect to beat Stranraer by the end of the summer.
Hopefully, the 2010 World Cup will hold better memories for me than Germany 2006.
To see a legend like Zinedine Zidane bow out on such a low, with a red card for head butting in the final, was demoralising.
I watched that final in a bar with someone who could lip read.
He assured me that the comment from Matterazzi to Zidane was shocking, and he was not surprised at the reaction.
It was: “I hear you are thinking of quitting, I could always get you a game for Rangers if you want.”
Now that he has retired from football, Zidane is finding it hard to fill his time.
David Beckham recently broke the outfield English cap record in the 2-1 win over Ukraine.
Now he is already making plans for when he retires and is branching out into public speaking.
He has already been practising. As guest speaker at a management seminar, he stepped up to the podium and began his speech.
“They are small and minty and keep my breath fresh for up to two hours,” he said.
“And to my wife Victoria’s delight they’re only two calories.”
The audience looked stunned, when a voice from the side of the podium whispered: “No David, you’re here to talk about tactics.”
