7-1

This was the best possible night to have been taken out to a sports bar with the office. Every four years I suddenly get a brief glimpse into what it's like to care about sports, and the atmosphere there during the evening went from amusement to surprise to disbelief over the rapidly increasing goal count. The live columnist on the Guardian kept having to interrupt himself because there was another ball in the net before he'd finished typing up the one he was on - and (as captured by @markchapman on Twitter) the BBC World Cup online coverage added clarifying text to the score just to verify that it wasn't a mistake.

I consider Germany my backup team, as I have family on my mother's side there and because my actual home country has not qualified for the World Cup since 1998, when I watched them kick off and then score an own goal in the first four minutes. They're still in the European cup, though, and there's always a chance they might not be terrible during the qualifiers. Who's our first opponent? Oh dear.