Let's tap up Ashley Cole

The England team in the writers' world cup lacked just one thing - talent

There are some invitations that you cannot turn down. This is one: 'We are organising a football world cup for writers in Italy. It's in Florence, all expenses paid. We wondered if you would like to be on the England team.' The call-up has finally come, I thought. And my yes, yes, yes was out before I could soberly imagine the likely pitfalls of acceptance: that I hadn't played football in anger for about a decade and that when Italians talk about being 'not as fit as we once were', they may well have a different interpretation of that phrase from that of a desk-bound English hack who has not broken into a run since an ill-fated outing to the gym just after Christmas.

Still, last weekend, I was packing boots, searching for ancient shinpads, thinking we had half a chance. I was still just about thinking that when the English squad arrived at Heathrow, though you could, based on appearance, have ventured many guesses as to the purpose of our trip - 'comparative literature conference in Frankfurt?' or 'proof-readers convention in Ostend?'- before you chanced on the idea that we were intent on bringing home this world cup. There had, too, been the kind of late selection problems that never worried Sven - David Baddiel had apparently pulled out because another member of the squad once gave him a poor review - but still, we felt ready.

The world cup was in its third year. Though heavily sponsored and widely promoted, it involved a limited interpretation of the word 'world'. The other teams taking part were Italy, Sweden and Hungary. The night before our opening game against the host nation, we sat through a demoralising film about the on-field poetry of the Italian side. The Italian goalkeeper, a novelist, set the tone by pointing to the goalposts. 'They are in the shape of a book,' he suggested. 'And this is where the story of a match begins ...'

The story of our own match began the following day with an up-and-at-'em team talk from Whitbread Prize winner Patrick Neate, our vocal holding player. Tobias Jones, our skipper, author of the widely acclaimed The Dark Heart of Italy, an incisive deconstruction of Italian society that I hoped might translate to the field, passed round the Deep Heat. Ben Markovits, currently in the middle of a trilogy of novels about Byron, quoted rousingly from Clough (Arthur Hugh rather than Brian).

On the field, however, the Italians looked disconcertingly more like footballers than writers. While they played, we scribbled gamely in midfield, we tended to be blocked going forward and we missed far too many of our crucial deadlines in defence. We lost 5-1.

I'm not sure how Sven's squad spent their evenings, but I do not imagine it involved listening to Hungarian prose poetry being translated into Italian. Suitably confused, the following day we succumbed to the Magyars (the pronunciation of which word, incidentally, prompting lively post-match debate).

The Swedes, who boasted a couple of former professionals turned poets (think Gazza writing sestinas), won the final on penalties, their goalkeeper, translator of James Joyce, apparently mesmerising the Italians by smoking a pipe ruminatively between each save.

Next year it will be different. 'Ashley Cole has just written a book,' someone pointed out as a very long evening of postmortem ended in a Scottish-Mexican bar near the Duomo. Yes, but can we afford him?