Where were you when Brady won us the World Cup?

IT was the Irish writer Flann O’Brien who said that questions are like beggars at the door, and should not be minded.

But sometimes one rattles around your mind and you just have to turn the latch.

Paul Brown is a freelance writer who did just that, welcoming a whole new world into his life.

After Scotland beat Alf Ramsey’s world champions England in 1967, those in the Tartan Army on their way back north, joked that they now held the title. Brown wondered about the logic many years later. “What if football was organised into a continuous series of boxing-style title matches running way back to the very first international game in 1872?”

It’s simple. Beat the champ, and you are the champ.

What folded out of this little wrinkle was a wonderful alternative history of football. The title has been contested by almost 100 nations at more than 800 matches over 130 years.

Long-forgotten friendlies in footballing outposts have hosted finals — you may have been at one — while showdowns between the game’s heavyweights enjoyed the added heft of a title on the line. But they didn’t know that.

To get to the point of knowing who was the incumbent Brown had to pull at the threads of soccer history and plot a complicated family tree stretching back to the first internationals between England and the Scots.

“There were various sets of statistics, each with different starting points and rules. I consolidated the stats and set some consistent rules, deciding to begin the lineage with the first ever international match in 1872,” he told me this week.

“The tournament was given the name the Unofficial Football World Championships (UFWC) and the website www.ufwc.co.uk was created. And it’s all come from there. Since then I’ve written a book, Unofficial Football World Champions, which was published earlier this year, and has just been translated into Japanese!”

And last week, while we were distracted by the action at Lansdowne Road, North Korea snatched the title for the first time by beating those new fans in Japan. Though, despite Kim Jong Il’s usual inclination for self-promotion, they still don’t seem to know they sit atop the football globe for the first time.

“The interest obviously increases when the title changes hands, and North Korea’s victory has filled my inbox and increased the website traffic. It’s been covered by most of the big media organisations over the years, all over the world. I’m not sure if the North Korean media have picked up on it yet though! I have informed the North Korean FA of their success, but they obviously haven’t had time to reply yet.”

And are the blazers in Zurich quaking in their Italian leather loafers that, like boxing, the sport’s governance may splinter into different associations — FIFA, who organise long, cumbersome, four-year cycles which culminate in World Cup finals — and the wham, bam, winner-takes-all UFWC? Not really, no.

“FIFA have commented,” says Blatter-in-waiting Brown, “that ‘as long as people have fun with football and that it is played in the spirit of respect for all involved, the non-violation of the Laws of the Game and the ethics of sport, FIFA is more than happy. We wish the UFWC fans a lot of fun’.” So what of the Boys in Green? Well, you may not have known it but our fingerprints are all over the trophy.

“Up until 1921 there was a combined Ireland side, and they won the title five times, but that team’s records were subsequently handed to Northern Ireland by FIFA,” says Brown, “Since then the Republic of Ireland team has won three UFWC title matches, most recently in 2004 against the Czech Republic and Romania, and previously in March 1977, 1-0 against France.”

So, Liam Brady’s left foot won us something after all.

But with the notional trophy now residing in Pyongyang, it may take some time to cross the DMZ again, given the fixture list. A European side may not have a shot at the belt until Brazil 2012, realistically. Perhaps Giovanni Trapattoni and Ireland are best advised then to concentrate on Ukraine and Poland before again taking on the world.

* [e-mail] Twitter: @Adrianrussell