Want to see England win the World Cup?

With the Three Lions finally finding form under Fabio Capello, football fans are full of belief that the national team can make it to the South Africa World Cup in 2010. Buoyed by the emphatic 4-1 victory over Croatia last month and expectation to produce another victory on Saturday against Kazakhstan, hundreds of thousands of England supporters will have started plotting their own path to the finals.

Abbey Savings has worked out how much cash England fans will need to tuck away into its eSaver Direct account paying 6.50% gross AER, from now until April 2010, to afford to get to the Rainbow Nation and support their team right the way through to the final whistle.

No frills fans

Those on a shoestring who fly economy, stay in budget accommodation and take cheap seats at the matches would need to amass £3,372.76 - which means they need to put away £169.76 per month.
Standard supporters

Fans flying premium economy, staying in mid-range accommodation and opting for the medium priced stadium tickets will need to save £5193.71, requiring a monthly saving of £261.42 per month.
Prawn sandwich brigade

Those looking to fly business class, staying in luxury accommodation and taking premium stadium tickets will need to amass a whopping £11,174.79 and squirrel away £562.46 per month.

Reza Attar-Zadeh, Director of Savings and Investments at Abbey, said: "It's great that England have got off to a winning start. But those who fancy the national teams' chances of not only making it to South Africa, but going all the way to the final have some serious saving to do. Luckily our eSaver Direct account not only enables fans to access a whopping 6.5 per cent for the first twelve months - but if England do fall short and miss the finals they'll have no problems accessing their money. Indeed, I imagine they'll probably fancy blowing it all on a desert island holiday somewhere faraway from South Africa and a television screen!"

Abbey is backed by the Santander Group, one of the largest and best capitalised banks in the world and the largest bank by market capitalisation in the Eurozone. Santander is the tenth largest bank in the world by tier one capital.