Meet the world's worst football columnist

Newspaper sport departments are notoriously independent, not liking having those upstairs disrupting their fiefdoms with their new-fangled ideas.

So the sports desk at the Mirror are said to be not at all amused with the new columnist foisted on them by their superiors for the World Cup: Helena Ford, described in her website bio as a “football journalist”.

Ford is not strictly a journalist, nor does she appear to know much about football, and indeed as recently as last year she worked as cabin crew for British Airways. But she was a contestant on the 12th series of ITV2’s Love Island last year and this year’s follow-up Love Island: All Stars – and for Mirror bosses, that’s good enough.

Ford’s first column for the paper appeared on June 17, ahead of England’s World Cup opener against Croatia. What did Ford have to say about the chances for Thomas Tuchel’s men?

“When I think about the World Cup or the Euros, there are three things that immediately come to mind,” she wrote. “Firstly, and most importantly, rosé, ‘it might be coming home’ becoming part of my daily vocab – and which fit footballer has been chosen for the squad.

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“Girls, we potentially have a whole month of glorifying mid-week drinking, living in beer gardens and shouting at the giant pop-up screens, ‘have a word with him, ref!’, whilst chronically not having any idea of what is even going on in the game (not all of us, of course!).

“Well, I’m here to tell you all that you absolutely do not need to know the difference between a striker and a centre back to actually be able to enjoy it, just as much as the men do.”

The football journalist had some advice, too: not for Tuchel on who should fill the problematic right-back position, but for those following the action in pubs.

“Let’s not forget the easy pulling tactics either,” she wrote. “If you really don’t understand what’s going on in the game, scan the gaff for the fittest lad in there and ask him instead. England might not be scoring on the pitch, but you’ll definitely be scoring off it.”

Ford was back later in the week, reviewing England’s game against Panama for those “in your local beer garden, magnum bottles of rosé flowing, the rooms full of guys you’ve definitely swiped on Raya and England is [sic] playing Panama”.

“Can we all agree that supporting England is basically the football equivalent of dating someone who leaves you on read for three days before suddenly turning up with flowers and a dinner reservation, like nothing had happened?,” she queried. “Because that’s exactly what Saturdays [sic] game felt like.

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“In the first half, Panama had decided the best way to stop England scoring was to defend with all eleven players, the subs, the coaching staff and, if allowed, someone’s mum.”

Come the knockout round and England were facing DR Congo, where they went behind to a surprise early goal. “I’d barely even settled into my bottle of rosé before the unsettling moment where Congo had dashed that ball into the goal, leaving myself and the nation with emotional whiplash,” mused Ford.

“As England searched for an equaliser, every misplaced pass was greeted with a throw of hands from the nation (or a glass of rosé).

“Then came the comeback, always bigger than the set back I say. Harry Kane proving again that he was just teasing us with his capabilities.”

While despairing Mirror football hacks are veering between incredulity and actual wonder at which department’s budget this drivel is coming from, the rest of the nation looks forward to England’s quarter-final against Norway and, more importantly, how much rosé Ford will quaff before filing her on-the-whistle take. It might be coming home!