Imagine, if you will, an alternate universe where England’s football team defeated Argentina in the World Cup semifinal right here on US soil during our nation’s 250th celebration.

By football, I’m referring to the game most Yanks call soccer, as we typically call the game played in America football. In American football, the use of feet occurs only on kickoffs, punts, field goal attempts, onside attempts, or, if you’re Doug Flutie, a dropkick. Feet are sometimes used in American football to stomp on the Dallas Cowboys’ midfield star or, if you’re Ndamukong Suh, to stomp on a player’s arm.

So, imagine, if you will, England wins and they get a bit cheeky. They decide that since they won on American soil during America’s 250th celebration, they have been given the power to take back what they lost in the 1700s — a war.

Harry Kane, captain of the English squad, tells the lads they can do this, to keep calm and carry on, and that they can show those tea-hating gets that Britannia really rules.

Harry explains now really is the perfect time for a second revolution and a second British invasion, since the US king is preoccupied with putting his name on everything, trying to prove he won an election in 2020 that he clearly lost, and pummeling Iran to extinction in a war those Yank blokes have no idea why they're fighting.

Instead of a cage-fighting ring on the White House lawn, a cricket ground could be installed just to confuse Americans as to why a team just scored six points on a ball that, as the Yanks would say, was "knocked outta the park," and why a ball that hit the boundary got them four points.

The Yanks would be further flummoxed as they try to figure out what a googly, doosra, and arm ball are, and why the announcers get so excited when one of those balls is bowled so perfectly.

“Make cricket great again,” Harry says, fanning the flames of revolution with a spirit that soon captures Churchill. “… We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be.”

Boy, aren’t you glad that here in the real world, England actually lost?

If my alternate universe scenario played out, one of the biggest obstacles would be learning to drive on the left side of the road. The only folks in the States who would be adept at this would be rural mail carriers.

Then there’s this whole Halifax Resolves thing, had Harry’s call for revolution succeeded in my own personal Twilight Zone. Tourists would marvel during reenactments at just how swiftly and soundly the Crown’s armies dispatched a bunch of farmers, merchants, and schoolboys.

Then we’d probably have to deal with the shenanigans of King Charles III, who, in honor of the 250th anniversary of the Brits beating the colonists, would want a one-pound, gold-finished coin with his likeness on it. He would start selling his own Bibles and using AI-generated memes of himself healing a wounded Redcoat.

Charles III would also rename the Washington–Rochambeau Revolutionary Route the King’s Highway, which, to his amazement, wasn’t already done by the current US king.

There would be a show on Apple TV called Led Tasso, which tells the story of a British football gaffer coming to the States to coach a gridiron team because the team’s owner wants to exact revenge on her philandering ex-husband. The experiment fails when Led Tasso sees that American football is nothing like the world’s most beautiful game, and gridiron football is forever banished.

These thoughts began swirling in my head as I followed the score of the England-Argentina match, which at the end of the first half was 1-0 England. “Oh, Lord,” I thought, “it’s starting. Now we’re gonna have to start worrying about football hooligans invading the US, and what happens if I step into a Man City pub while wearing a Tottenham Hotspur kit.”

Then I got busy with a crime story, so my attention was diverted.

Upon checking the final score, I was relieved to see Argentina came back and won the match, leaving me only to worry about how we’re gonna deal with our own king, who’s preoccupied with putting his name on stuff and pummeling Iran into extinction for whatever reason he wants to obliterate an entire civilization — Lance Martin