Late night kick-offs, nightmare defending, horrific results rolling in from Mexico, the World Cup dream turns sour

The mind plays some strange tricks when football puts the body’s time clock out of sync

The manager has to go. No doubts about it. Three games, two defeats and one draw. Home before the postcards and the DHL sombrero deliveries. Out, out, out.

We’ve had enough. We went to the World Cup with hope, with optimism, with the momentum of the play-offs driving our sails across the Atlantic and down to Mexico. And we blew it.

We were poorly organised. We were badly set-up. We were lacking leadership and inspiration. The players failed to deliver. The manager let the players down. The team let the country down. They owe us an apology.

The manager must go. Either he resigns this morning or we demand his head on a block. And he can take half that team with him. They think they are world class, the lot of them. They wouldn’t lace me boots.

And they’re as cocky as their manager. He sat there last night and he let us down in his press conference again with his insistence that he’s staying put. He tried to make it all about us.

“I want to use this opportunity to thank our fans. Just getting to the World Cup is a great success,” he said. “For our fans it was an opportunity to take this beautiful, if expensive, trip. We appreciate their support.”

Oh yeah, make us think we’re wonderful. You didn’t spend your hard earned cash on traipsing half way across the world, did you? You didn’t take your kids out of school for a once in a lifetime experience. We promised them Disneyland, you gave them the Rocky Horror Picture show.

And in your own head you’re staying on, aren’t you? You’re not taking that pension, are you? You’re not reading the room? You’re not able to read the room, are you?

“It was a long journey and process,” you said. “I am conscious that after making some changes we will be able to improve for next time. I will definitely fulfil my contract. I never give up on any fights.”

Fight? There was my fight in my dead granny’s rottweiler than there was on the pitch last night. Your lot couldn’t win a fight with themselves in a phonebox.

Hang on, there’s a bit of noise. The phone is buzzing. Wake me up before you go, go. It’s the summer alarm. Hang on, this isn’t Mexico. I’m not in the Azteca Stadium. My team hasn’t just been beaten 3-0 by the host nation. We’re not bottom of the Group A table and home before the Scots.

That was all a dream. And a nightmare. I am Czechia. Or I was there while I slept. And the nightmare returned, prompted no doubt by the shared suffering of our Celtic cousins as they swapped Scotland The Brave for Scotland The Naïve in their pitch battle with Brazil down in Miami.

The World Cup of the endless nights I’m calling it and it was a disaster on Thursday. I decided to stay up for as long as Scotland were in their game against Brazil. I could have gone to bed after 10 minutes, such was the naivety of the Scots defence as they gave the ball to some of the greatest forward thinking players in the world and struggled to get it back, except to pick it out of the net.

I lasted until half-time, which is more than Scotland did. Actually, I fell asleep in the comfy armchair, waking as Neymar returned to the greatest shirt of them all.

I wandered off to bed with a simple question in my head - would Czechia do us a favour and beat Mexico to at least soften the blow that was Prague and prove that they deserved to be on the World Cup stage - and that prompted the nightmare.

Mexico ended up 3-0 winners and Czechia ended up packing their bags early. My life as a Czechia fan came to an abrupt and horrific end. The dream became the nightmare highlighted above.

But at least their exit might park the Prague pain for a while. They’re now as out of the World Cup as we are and they can call for their manager to quit, call for their FA to sack him, ask questions of the players who gave them not one but two great penalty shoot-outs that it turns out served only to flatter them.

We’ll always have Prague. Unfortunately. They’ll always have Mexico. Good enough for them too.

Now pass me that Cape Verde flag. I’ve a team and a country to support at the World Cup finals.