We are simply Not Good Enough and probably never will be – not unless English football goes back to its grassroots and develops kids’ skills at a much earlier age.

For a nation of perpetual whingers, we have miraculously indefatigable reserves of optimism when it comes to the national team, regardless of the most recent evidence. We have faith, sometimes blind faith, and I think the problem is that it is not shared by the players themselves. For all their riches, fame and pampering, in their hearts they have just enough self-awareness to know that they’re not the demi-gods they’re built up to be in the public imagination – they don’t share our delusional belief in the inevitability of their victory.

Quite simply, they lack the mental strength of the Germans, who believe that victory on the football field is their birthright. The Germans are lucky too, of course but, no matter how half-arsed their team might be in any given year, if they’re losing at half time the coach doesn’t need to start throwing mugs around the changing room. He simply reminds them that they do have to win the match, as if they’d just lost sight of that fact, gently nudges them back into that state of entitlement and self-belief that enables them to go out and do it. It’s an attitude that’s clearly hard to fake if you don’t have it.

That doesn’t mean that it’s never fun being an England supporter. I know I wasn’t alone in having an absolute ball throughout Euro 96. When we lost to Germany on penalties in the semi-final, one of my most football-mad German friends rang up the next day to apologise. “You may have screwed-up on penalties, as usual” he said, “but you were quite clearly the best team in the competition.” And he was right, we were. All-out victory would be lovely but, if the team can play half as well this time round, it’ll all be worth it.

We’ve never experienced a betrayal of national trust and expectation as dramatic as the Brazilian performance at the last World Cup, but still there’s something quite touching about our ability to keep on dreaming of footballing success, despite the repeated trampling those dreams have taken over the years from a succession of lazy, unfocused, non-penalty-practicing line-ups.