Ten consolations in the hour of our defeat

Switching Des off will be like making love to a beautiful woman: press the right button and you're in heaven

The Samaritans are on full alert. Platoons of grief counsellors are on standby. Bobbies on the beat have been issued with spare handkerchiefs to help staunch the flow of tears of people on the street. Blair's speechwriters have been putting the finishing touches to his spontaneous off-the-cuff statement to the press.

The practical measures are in place but, in the real, emotional sense, the nation remains unprepared.

This column has a duty to shake readers out of their state of denial and tell the truth. It is quite possible that before, after or during your reading of these words, England will have lost a football match against Argentina and will soon, gloomily, be on their way home.

The traditional way to respond to this event is with our own brand of enraged, self-lacerating humour. The manager will become a hate figure. Players, who hours before had been the youthful embodiment of the nation's hopes, will be seen as over-rated, hopeless and embarrassing. One in particular – usually Gary Neville, but this year it will have to be someone else – will be selected as the focus for our derision. At least, if we had made the next round, face-saving phrases like "World Cup adventure" could have been deployed by the commentators, but for us to leave this early will be seen as humiliation on a global scale.

There is another way. Loss, psychologists say, can have a positive effect. Rather than blubbing uncontrollably and kicking the cat, perhaps we should all consider the benefits that defeat will bring.

1. The stranglehold of government will be weakened. As Harold Wilson discovered, nothing consolidates a government's popularity more than success at football. Failure might possibly dent the confidence of an administration that has become dangerously arrogant and high-handed in the absence of any meaningful opposition.

2. It will make a lot of Argentinians very happy. Think global. Be international in your reaction to this. Argentinians have had a horrid time recently, and victory will mean far more to them than it does to us. Imagine little Juan as he smiles proudly up at the poster of his team. There – you feel better already, don't you?

3. It will knock the leer off Des Lynam's face. This man behaves increasingly like the creepy Swiss Tony of The Fast Show. Switching Des off will be like making love to a beautiful woman – press the right button and you will be in heaven.

4. It will get children used to the idea of loss. One of the reason caring parents keep pets is to habituate their children, in a gentle, containable way, to the idea of death. A World Cup defeat will be a similar lesson, with millions of kiddies learning how to deal with disappointment and emerge an emotionally stronger person.

5. It will relieve us of the embarrassment of watching Paul Gascoigne trying to speak English. To judge by his efforts as an expert summariser, Gazza is a sweet man who has yet to master his own language to the extent of being able to finish a sentence.

6. It will shake people out of their patriotic trance. There has been far too much flag-waving of late to be entirely healthy. Such is our state of smug nationalism that the BBC was able to schedule as the highlight of its jubilee viewing a play presenting the Falklands War as an unambiguously glorious victory and Mrs Thatcher as a strong yet weepily humane leader. At a time when immigration and Europe are top of the political agenda, the patriots need a spot of cooling off.

7. It will give the England manager time to get his love life back into shape. None of our business, of course, but some of us are worried that Sven has not achieved closure with Nancy following his pre-competition friendly with Ulrika. A few weeks of cuddling up to watch other teams playing will calm things down considerably.

8. It will increase national productivity. Frankly, we are all taking it much too easily. This week, for example, we have produced absolutely nothing, what with our fannying about over the long weekend and the general skiving off to watch football. It is time for us all to get back to work.

9. It will help English football teams who let English players play for them. More and more fans have discovered that watching a bunch of foreigners play on a Saturday afternoon is interesting but finally rather dull. Premiership managers will react to defeat in the World Cup by including even fewer English players, thereby driving spectators towards teams in the lower division where the real fun and passion are to be found.

10. It will take the heat out of the housing market. No one quite understands how this works, but clearly national confidence leads to a generally irresponsible attitude towards personal expenditure. A useful defeat will let some air out of the bubble of the national economy before it goes pop.

terblacker@aol.com