Leading article: Teutonic game

Postpone Wimbledon. Put the strawberries back in the fridge. Yesterday's victory for England over Equador in the World Cup - courtesy of a David Beckham free kick - means that the first week of Wimbledon will be overshadowed by an entirely different ball game.

The England football team go stuttering on with yet another unconvincing performance against a rather weak team. Still, we imagine that not too many England fans will be complaining if Sven Goran Eriksson's men manage to stutter and unconvince their way to England's first World Cup title since 1966. Indeed, we cannot help noticing that England seem - of late - to have adopted a curiously Tuetonic attitude to the beautiful game: win ugly. Whoever imagined that holding the World Cup in Germany would result in such a wonderful cultural crossover?

So: good news for this football-crazy country (minus a few Scottish and Welsh postcodes of course). Flag manufacturers, supermarkets, plasma TV salesmen, bookmakers and pubs will be breathing a sigh of relief today. So will our Chancellor of the Exchequer, Gordon Brown. Not only has his favourite team progressed in the tournament; the economy will get a lift for the next week. But in life, as in sport, there are always losers. Travel agents, mortgage brokers, and World Cup widows will be cursing those wasted Equadorian chances.

Still there's one thing we all can agree on: if it all goes wrong on Saturday, there's always the tennis ...