To paraphrase – i.e. plagiarise – the master: Hello. You've obviously heard there's a football match on this afternoon.

Anyway, a brief history of Germany v England (with incidental music): The teams first meet in Berlin in 1930, Richard Hoffman becoming the first non-Scot to rattle a hat-trick past an English keeper's lugs. That game ends 3-3, thanks to a late English equaliser; Germany will have to wait until 1968 for their first win over England.

The next couple of games are played out in the shadow cast by impending conflict. The FA decide not to cancel a friendly at White Hart Lane in 1935, despite the TUC calling for it to be ditched with a view to not giving advertising space to the increasingly ubiqutous Hitler brand, then order the team to throw Nazi shapes before a return game in Berlin in 1938. Best left all round, this period.

Late in 1954, England beat the West Germany side that had won the World Cup a few months earlier. Sort of. Most of the German first teamers have been given the day off. Still, well done, everyone! England would of course do the job properly against the Germans in 1966, a year before Jim Baxter's Scotland takes the world crown off them in a match at yes OK this is pathetic.

And then three German epochs. (1) In 1968, the realisation England could be beaten, Franz Beckenbauer winning a tight game in Hanover. (2) In 1970, the realisation England could be beaten in a major championship, after riding their luck in the 1970 World Cup quarter-final. (Does Uwe Seeler mean that back header? Oh I don't think so.) And then (3) the realisation that they're better – much better – than the English, rolling them over 3-1 at Wembley in the 1972 European Championship quarter-finals. A point they go on to prove again and again over the following 20-odd years by winning World Cups and European Championships various.

But since Germany's Euro 96 win, the two teams have been much of a muchness. England have won the last game between the sides (a 2-1 win in Berlin in 2008), the last competitive fixture (that 5-1 in 2001), and the last fixture in a major tournament (1-0 at Euro 2000). Germany meanwhile have reached a World Cup final, a European Championship final, and a World Cup semi. Actually, this isn't really much of a muchness, is it.

Anyway, the English papers have been embarrassing themselves today, as you'd expect. It's been war this, blitz that, Churchill speeches the other. Any English fan thoroughly sick of this myopic nonsense – and anyone else interested in football, frankly – is advised to read a new book called Send Them Victorious: England's Path To Glory 2006-2010 by David Stubbs. A series of England match reports written by "biased but fair" jingoistic Boer War veteran The Wing Commander, it gives both the Fourth Estate and the players they overhype a right old shoeing, and is pretty much the funniest book about football ever written. Here's a tinder-dry snippet from an England-Germany report:

    "It is no exaggeration, but rather an imaginative simile, to compare this game to World War II – World War II, that is, minus the participation of Churchill, Field Marshall Montgomery, Adolf Hitler, Herman Goering, and Douglas Bader, who like our own Frank Lampard, suffered from the handicap of not being able to use his legs in any effective way."

You have got to love this book.

Kick-off: 3pm by the British summer hourglass.

The stadium: Free State Stadium, Bloemfontein.

What both teams need to have on: The battle fever.

What both teams will have on: The battle fever.

Germany will be playing in: Their trademark white shirts. Such are the benefits of coming first in your group.

England will be playing in: Their "away" red shirts. But then they seem to prefer these anyway. Give it a few years, and red will be the first-choice kit anyway. It has to happen sometime.

Today's fall guy should things go pear-shaped: Jorge Larrionda (Uruguay, king of all footballing nations). At this stage of the 2006 tournament, this dude went red-card happy during Italy's 10-9 players-left-on-the-field win over USA. Let's hope that sort of brouhaha doesn't break out today. Or are we feeling mischevious?

While we're on a discipline tip, here are the players on one yellow card and risking a day off come quarter-final time: Johnson, Gerrard and Milner for England; Lahm, Khedira, Schweinsteiger, Ozil, Muller and Cobbleigh for Germany.

Here's the England team, unchanged, much as we expected: James, Johnson, Terry, Upson, Ashley Cole, Milner, Lampard, Barry, Gerrard, Defoe, Rooney.
Subs: Green, Dawson, Lennon, Crouch, Joe Cole, Warnock, Wright-Phillips, Carragher, Heskey, King, Carrick, Hart.

And here's Germany, featuring a fit Bastian Schweinsteiger: Neuer, Lahm, Friedrich, Mertesacker, Boateng, Schweinsteiger, Khedira, Muller, Ozil, Podolski, Klose.

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