Australia United: Tony Wilson's World Cup Diary

In Kaiserslautern, Tony Wilson watched Tim Cahill transform Australia's World Cup dream from despair to delight in five mad minutes against Japan. In Munich, he saw the Socceroos match the bedazzling Brazilians step for Samba step before eventually succumbing. In Stuttgart, he rode an emotional rollercoaster of great goals and goalkeeping gaffes, refereeing blunders and red cards aplenty and, most importantly, Harry Kewell's historic late strike to eliminate Croatia. And then the nightmares started.

In a hot and airless Kaiserslautern hotel room, in the aftermath of Totti's shattering, nerveless blast into the unsavable yonder during Australia's showdown with Italy, Wilson tried counting sheep to restore peaceful slumber to his nights. But over and over he kept returning to the same questions: "Why God, in your infinite wisdom, did you choose the 93rd minute? And why did it have to be a questionable penalty? And did you think that was just a bloody good laugh?"

But despite Australia's tragedy, Wilson caught up on some sleep and soldiered on to complete his own personal World Cup campaign: to tell the story of football and football fans through the prism of the Cup. From the Green and Gold army, to Brazilian fans in their bikinis, Tony Wilson's World Cup is the quirky, hysterical story of football fans; overriding, overwrought emotion nationalism; politics; and religion. And Wilson's findings? Planet World Cup is a very different place from Planet Earth.