#15 Ivory Coast - or, Sweden.

After a gap in the schedules and a top-notch lunch at The Eagle on City Road, I turn to the evening game. My team is Ivory Coast and I have a dilemma. The Evening Standard tips The Gold Coast in Brixton, where I've already been to watch Ghana – and a repeat visit, albeit for a different team, just doesn't feel right. So I follow Time Out's tip, which is for a pub that's usually Swedish but will – because Sven-Göran Eriksson now coaches the Ivorians – now be flying the flag for Ivory Coast.

At least, that's the theory.

Things start to look ominous as I walk past the the Swedish Church, which is flying the Swedish flag. It's a taste of Scandinavian things to come. Inevitably, the bar is entirely, 110%, utterly empty of Africans. Instead, there are all sorts of recognisably Swedish things. I'm talking tall blonde women, small blonde children, several flavours of Kopparberg cider, a photograph of Sven laminated into one of the tables, and a tall, strapping blonde barman called Hannes. Who has a Swedish scarf hung on the wall behind him. I'm pretty sure there's a small branch of Ikea at the back of the pub, it's that bad.

This man is not from Ivory Coast.

I'm staring my first failure in the face: not an Ivorian bar, no Ivorians to talk to. But frankly, after a good eight hours out and about, I just can't be arsed with going anywhere else. I decide to make the best of a bad hand by talking to the nearest Bloke at The Bar. He's not Ivorian, but neither is he Swedish. He's local. It turns he works for the Argentinian Embassy, which is pretty sweet because tomorrow is an Argentinian bank holiday – so he has a day off. Nice.

James is full of stories, but I can't write about any of them because if I did, Argentinian secret services would have to find me and kill me. That saves on typing, then.

The name's James, not Bond, but he did used to have hot young Swedish lodgers. No wonder he looks happy with himself.