lOVE it or loathe it, the World Cup is coming to an end this weekend, and even the most ardent football haters out there must concede this tournament has been worth paying some attention to.

From Uruguay’s carnivorous striker through to Brazil’s shocking dismantling at the hands of a fearsome German squad, the stories have come thick and fast, and there may still be more to come as the event speeds to its finale on Sunday.

Personally I’m not much of a football fan the rest of the time, my ignorance of the sport a fairly regular point of ridicule from several of the insubordinate reporters surrounding me.

Still, my unexpected fantasy football league success (relatively speaking, at least – irritating Wycombe reporter Simon Farr has long since secured his victory, clearly spending far too long selecting his team with a surgical precision when he should have been writing news stories) has afforded me a few moments of smugness, I’m happy to say.

But there is something special about the World Cup. Gone are the cynical pay packets that now blight the Premier League; gone is the fact that so few players have much link these days to the team they play for beyond their gun-for-hire status.

Instead these are national teams playing to make their countries and fans proud, their star players – both the expected ones and those who emerge, James Rodriguez-like, from relative obscurity – taking centre stage to become national heroes for the duration of these four weeks.

Obviously this has now become the tournament that will be best remembered for the brutal humbling of a footballing giant. Few football matches can have made such uncomfortable viewing as that particular game, as Brazil suddenly took on the appearance of a bunch of callow new starters at school daring to take on a team of sixth formers – cringe TV has rarely been quite so cringeworthy, especially during that fateful first half.

It was that little boy in glasses crying his heart out who the camera cut away to at about the time the fourth goal crashed in that I felt sorriest for, I think.

And this year’s tournament has given us some tremendous also-rans. The early match upsets caused by Costa Rica, for instance, and an incredible (if ultimately doomed) extra time performance from the US against Belgium, made for no shortage of great TV.

It would be nice to include England in that list, but we all know we there is no chance of that.

They certainly had a few sparky moments, but, they were still outweighed with that vague fog of disappointment that seems to surround all their recent tournament campaigns. Still, maybe next time. Or the time after that.

In fact, I think I enjoyed this tournament much more once they crashed out – certainly it makes for a far less aggravating spell in front of the telly, and easier to instead enjoy the sport at hand.

And part of the joy of the World Cup comes in adopting a few plucky nations to support, basking in their glory when they win, but not feeling too gutted when they don’t.

It’s all coming to an end now, so my enthusiasm for football will no doubt go on the back-burner for a couple of years, at least until Euro 2016. But it has been fun while it lasted.