Nearly 50 years of hurt never stopped England fans moaning

Michael Simkins on dousing the barbecues, taking down the wall charts... and the typically English reaction to a World Cup exit

If you wish to see Paris at its best, so it’s said, go there during August. With Parisians making the customary exodus for their annual holidays, the city, for a brief period, falls silent.

London, too has its own brief hiatus for those wishing to explore the city in peace: although in our case the opportunity only presents itself once every four years. I'm speaking, of course, of the football World Cup, the one time when the nation takes to their television sets and leaves the streets – for 90 minutes plus injury time – to tourists and tramps.

For a few short hours last Thursday evening the capital resembled a ghost town, as millions of red-blooded football fans settled down to watch the crucial England versus Uruguay clash in Group D. Both sides had already lost their opening game, so the stakes could not have been higher. For the victors, a place in the knockout phase beckoned, while for the losers, an ignominious exit was the only likely reward.

There’s something wonderfully touching about the pitiful trust we English put in our national side. Each time the competition comes around we allow ourselves to dream afresh, that this time we might actually do well. No talk of lifting the trophy of course, nor of even reaching the finals – after all, after nearly 50 years of heartbreak, humiliation and bungled penalty shoot-outs, we know better than that – but at least of progressing to the quarter-finals, or, whisper it softly, even the semis.

Barbecues are lit and flags of St George unfurled from bedroom windows and for a few precious weeks the country allows optimism to triumph over experience.

And why shouldn't we? Aren't we always being told that the English Premier League is the best in the business? Are not teams such as Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool the envy of the world? Surely to goodness we should be able to muster 11 individuals from their collective ranks who can do justice to our sporting reputation and see us safely through to glory? Of course we can. The snag is that they're all foreigners.

As it was, England lost the match 2-1. English football may have a reputation for chronic international underachievement, but this time around in Brazil we surpassed ourselves. Not since 1958 has an England team failed to make it beyond the first round. To fail so ignominiously really does suggest a certain sort of genius.

For a few hours afterwards, hope still flickered. What if rivals Italy beat Costa Rica? What if we could score ten goals in our remaining group match? What if dreams were possible? Yet only a fantasist or someone with a doctorate in advanced quantum theory could have conjured up a scenario whereby we might yet scrape through.

And now, with our departure confirmed, it’s time to douse the barbecue, take down the wall charts and consign the flags to the store cupboard once more.

Indeed, the second stage of this doleful ritual has already started, by which I mean the inevitable post-mortem. Over the next few weeks the chat shows and radio phone-ins will be jammed with all the usual hand wringing and recrimination that habitually attend such debacles.

Does Wayne Rooney live up to his world-class reputation? Is manager Roy Hodgson the right man for the job and, as one caller suggested on TV, was the reason we fared so poorly because the England players sung the pre-match national anthem with insufficient gusto?

Most crucially, should we have done more to combat Uruguayan wunderkid Luis Suarez, whose two goals sent us plummeting to defeat: perhaps by locking him in a hotel room, or better still, offering him British citizenship before the tournament commenced?

These painful post-match autopsies may be so much hot air, but they fulfil a crucial psychological function, which is to numb the pain while a scab forms over the wound. Sporting heartache, like the death of a beloved pet, may be unbearable in the aftermath, but is quickly forgotten: and anticipation for the forthcoming English domestic season will quickly sweep all other considerations from our minds – at least until Russia in 2018.

It was author Nick Hornby who wrote that “the natural state of any football supporter is bitter disappointment”. Such a sentiment could surely only have been written by an Englishman.

Michael Simkins is an actor and writer based in London

On Twitter: @michael_simkins