Some teams liven the vibe

Archie Henderson: It's always fun to have England at a World Cup. Ours would have been infinitely poorer without their players, their fans and their press.

Few other teams would have made a meal of Robert Green's goalkeeping stuff-up. A gentle reprimand or short tantrum, perhaps, but nothing more.

The England media made a banquet out of poor Green's error. So we were entertained with "Hand of Clod" and, when Green turned up at the Sun City golf course the day after his blooper: "Putter Fingers" in the Sun.

These lovely red-top headlines were quickly followed by the usual jokes, the best of which was: Robert Green spent three hours practising stopping shots. Of the 4000 fired at him, he never let one in. Then he and Emile Heskey rejoined the rest of the England squad.

So if little Slovenia dump England out of our World Cup on Wednesday afternoon, it will be too sad.

They just don't send the blood racing the way England do.

And how many Slovenian fans are here anyway? Half-a-dozen? Twenty?

Who will boo their team if they lose badly? Will any of them have the gall to invade the players' dressing-room - and become a minor celebrity in Ljubljana (that's their capital, if you didn't know, and I had to Google it).

The Slovenes, a left-over from the Habsburg and Yugoslav bunch, might be nice people, but are they as interesting as Wayne Rooney, Fabio Capello and the other lot? Not on your Zlatan Ljubijankic.

If England had not been here, we would never have got to know Pavlos Joseph.

He's the fat bloke who went looking for the gents in Cape Town stadium on Friday night after that turgid goalless draw.

By accident - this is his version - he stumbled into the England dressing-room where he promptly gave them a dressing-down.

With Julius Malema's Keystone coppers still seeking him in the streets of Green Point the next day, he was sitting down to breakfast with - a red-top tabloid.

Yesterday the Sunday Mirror ran its "exclusive" on page one.

That would never happen in the Ljubljana Sunday Slovenian, or whatever goes for a tabloid in those parts.

If the unknown Slovenes manage to beat England on Wednesday at the Nelson Mandela Bay stadium, it will be the biggest shock of our World Cup and deprive us of one of the two travelling circuses. The other being Diego Maradona, but he's not likely to leave soon. Not the way his boys are playing.

Maradona is as entertaining as his magicians on the field. It's no wonder the TV cameras linger on him almost as much as they do on the players.

While Capello's body language betrays a low opinion of his England players, Maradona's antics reveal sheer passion.

The British tabloids also love him. Des Kelly, writing in the Mail on Sunday, said he looked like the product of an illicit union between Eric Cantona and a Tasmanian Devil.

The Pommy press love that kind of thing.

When Jonah Lomu had wreaked havoc among the England rugby team in the Rugby World Cup semifinal of 1995 at Newlands, one of their number compared him to the progeny of Linford Christie and Giant Haystack. The former was a British Olympic sprinter and the latter a remnant of the World Wrestling Federation.

Argentina play Greece in Polokwane tomorrow. It will not be a problem for Maradona.

England play Slovenia in Port Elizabeth on Wednesday. Let's pray for them.