Not many retailers will be crying today. What was remarkable about yesterday’s debacle was the air of resignation about a defeat that the majority seemed to have viewed as inevitable.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone
Silence the vuvuzelas, those plastic wannabe horns
Let retailers pinning hopes on England rest forlorn.

Pack up the moon, dismantle the Sun,
The St George flags are not wanted now: away with every one,
Pack up the barbies, empty the tins,
That’s it until 2014 when once more the whole charade begins.
(With sincere apologies to WH Auden and John Hannah)

Actually, not many retailers will be crying today. What was remarkable about yesterday’s debacle was the air of resignation about a defeat that the majority seemed to have viewed as inevitable. We never really stood much of a chance and England’s lamentable progress through the group stages of the World Cup has ended with a lacklustre return to Blighty amid all the usual recriminations.

Retailers however can hold their collective heads up high. Maybe they were pessimistic about the team’s prospects or perhaps they were just dazzled by Brazilian bravado or Argentinian action. Whatever the case, a quick trawl along Oxford Street yesterday revealed what most right-thinking folk already knew, waving an England flag is the total triumph of hope over experience.
And retailers tend to pin their hopes on experience to gain a sense of that which may work and what definitely won’t. Which would perhaps explain the almost total absence of Cross of St George flags from the UK’s leading retail thoroughfare (other than those attached to the wing mirrors of passing black cabs).

Yes, there were plenty of low-key references to the South African football fest, but there were almost no allusions to the home team, other than in Sports Direct, which had binged on the flag and all things associated with it.

It’s a fair bet that when the visual merchandising teams sat down a few months ago to plan the window schemes that would be used during the summer months, the World Cup would have been seen as both opportunity and threat. An opportunity to shift a few portable barbecues and make the most of an event that would have people spending large amounts of time in front of the TV or checking results on 3G portable phones: a threat because if England lost in the first week, they could be left with a lot of singularly unwanted stock.

In the event, they played things about right, celebrating football the game while ignoring a feeble national team.

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