Why - I ask you - does the soccer world cup have to be so painful?

Sixteen years ago my son was born - and one of the many things arranged by the divinity (may She be blessed from eternity to eternity) was inter alia that the boy would grow up to be someone who would be football crazy.

She did this because She knew that I am rugby crazy. At one of those board meetings held on high, at which She and her angels, seated on the snowy white clouds, go through those lists of people, She said: "Oh, Gordin, yes, we need to try that particular little shit a bit. I know just what to do. Blue bulls, shmu bulls, I'm going to make him live through a Fifa number presided over by Septimus Bluster."

And so it was - to cut a long story short - that I found myself, as you will recall (see here), on a bus returning from Ellis Park, having to squabble with an unknown Patrice Lumumba look-alike to preserve the health of my eardrums and those of those representatives of mankind who were also on the bus. ("If you miss me at the back of the bus, you can't find me nowhere, c'mon over to the front of the bus, you'll find me right there ....")

And so it also was that on the dark night of 27 June I had to sally forth to Soccer City to watch Argentina play Mexico. If you travelled there from the Wits park-and-ride, as I did, you then had to hunker down for a forced-route march of about 2,5 kms to get to the stadium.

I don't mind a leisurely stroll; in fact I'm rather keen on ‘em. But it so happens that on the evening of 27 June the temperature was 0 degrees C and there was an awful icy wind blowing from the south and straight through my cashmere underwear.

(Do you know the joke about Julius Caesar and Abie? Caesar, who's trying to cash in on everything in Rome, a bit like Fifa in Seffrica, asks Abie why his togas are more popular with the Romans than his, Caesar's. "Kish mir [cashmere] in togas [tochas]," replied Abie. Well, maybe you had to be there.)

Not only this but - presumably in keeping with the customs and mores of their home - the Mexican fans, among whom my son Jake and I found ourselves lodged (and bear in mind that Jake is and was a diehard Lionel Messi and therefore Argentine fan), the Mexican fans not only kept waggling their arms and wiggling their fingers and shouting "puto" ("male whore") at Messi every time he touched the ball, they also kept throwing beer around.

Now if it had been Grolsch or anything that I could have drunk, I would not have minded. But this was Budweiser - which, like the famous joke about the couple making love in a canoe, is much too close to water for one to be happy about having it poured down's one's neck and on to one's leather jacket and cashmere scarf.

I returned from that evening, having done the forced march back to the bus, having also somehow ingested the germ of the dreaded SA winter lurgy. The week commencing 28/6 was thus not a happy one for me.

This dynamo of energy and strength - that's me - was laid as low as Eskom without coal; my throat lining was as thick as a piece of uncooked boerewors; my joints all turned arthritic; and my nose was as blocked as service delivery. All in all, I felt as bad as former president Thabo Mbeki must have felt when he received that call from the ANC one Friday night/Saturday morning.

And then - and then - came the defeat of the Argentineans at the hands of the Polish/Turkish blitzkrieg known as the German soccer team. (Btw, did you see Angela Merkel, the chancellor, striding up and down and at one point even planting a kiss on the cheek of a bamboozled JG Zuma?) The pig sticker really stuck it to the Argies.

Jake, my son, was of course really distraught (a) about Messi and (b) because it was the first game that he'd gotten wrong (which is how I know, by the way, and have known for weeks, that the Spaniards are going to win the world cup).

I, however, was really distraught about the "end of the dream" for Diego Maradona. I love the mad, little guy. First of all, he is little - and I think we should stand up for little, bearded guys who are generally discriminated against by the world and especially by women.

Second, I think he's one of the best "role models" (as they are called these days) around, though all his references to the divinity (whose gender he has wrong) I could do without.

I think Maradona is a fine role model because he comes from the barrio, fought his way to the top playing fine soccer (and cheating a little from time to time like all good footballers), and he's loopy-doops.

He acts on dreams, puts too much talcum powder down his nose, has heart attacks, goes to visit Castro, knocks over journalists, is good to his family, gets bitten by his dog, trains with his team. This is a life well-lived. I mean, what role models do we currently have in this country? Ashley Smith? Joseph Aranjes? Little Julie Malema? Septimus Bluster? There's just no comparison.

Finally, it was 16 years ago, on 7 July, that the man-child Jake was born. The original idea was that we would go barreling down to Durbs by the sea in my trusty vehicle in the early hours of the morning - to see the blitzkrieg stopped in its tracks by the Spaniards.

But then a Seacom repeater started repeating off Mombasa like a bad hamburger (I think it was Somali pirates), Wits communications went down like a stripper's cashmere under-rods, and the state of the world cup soccer newsroom I was running start looking very dicey - besides I couldn't find any tickets - so that plan was shelved.

My wife and I were all set to take Jake and some of his friends to what is now quaintly called the Killarney Country Club (the old TAC) - but it turned out that the person  with whom the booking was made  chose to forget and sent all the staff home!

After a long day's work, we ended up in a certain hostelry - no names, no pack drill, at least they were there - with a bunch of teenagers, the cold wind whistling through, the German fans shouting their support, the noise of the game and the vuvuzelas drilling through our nerves, the food close to inedible ... though at least the Spaniards won ...

And you wonder why I ask why the soccer world cup has to be so painful? A world soccer cup is not a country for old men. Well, not for this one anyway; and soon it's going to be over and one is going to have to return to what is laughingly called real life.

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