FIFA World Cup 2018: The unbearable agony of supporting England

The English national team over the years has embodied values which can only be described as the complete anti-thesis of those described in Rudyard Kipling’s If, losing their head when they shouldn’t, not trusting themselves when they should and failing to treat both Triumph and Disaster without loud wailing.

The stoic upper-lipped British values which are supposed to define the nation has been perennially absent from the nation's football teams as they've crumbled time and again under the slightest pressure. 

If football is a religion, then supporting the English national team is the sport’s equivalent of eternal damnation. Just like the official music videos, which gets progressively worse every year (compare this year’s Live it Up with Ricky Martin’s Cup of Life in 1998) England’s fortunes also plummet with each passing tournament.

Despite being born in Kolkata, a city whose neighbourhoods turn blue or yellow in honour of their favourite South American teams, I’ve had the misfortune of throwing in my lot with the English thanks to Manchester United’s rise coinciding with the advent of global broadcast of footballing leagues.

But while supporting the Red Devils has had its fair share of rewards – despite a distinct downturn in fortunes since Ferguson retired – there has been no such joy following the trials and travails of the Three Lions.

Quite strangely, despite boasting one of the top leagues in the world, the Premier League has failed to put together 11 decent men who can play together. Unlike say the IPL, which has honed the Indian cricket team into a formidable world-beating outfit, the Premier League’s heroes turn into idols with clay feet whenever they play for the national team.

Ever since I have been consciously following the World Cup (France 1998), England have progressively found more tragic ways to be dumped out of the tournament. Losing to better teams on penalty shootouts have invariably metamorphosed into losing without a fight or even failing to get past the group stages.

Even before I started watching, pain and agony was the main course for the English fan. Fate it seems has always metaphorically urinated on the team's fortunres, and literally too if you count the dog that soaked Jimmy Greaves’ shirt in 1962 during the loss to Brazil, a canine that the wizard Garrincha loved so much that he took home.

Other than that solo win in 1966 in Wembley against West Germany thanks to a ghost goal due to the largesse of an Azerbaijan linesman, joy at the World Cup has been hard to find. There was Maradona’s Hand of God in Mexico 1986, Gazza’s tears in Italy 1990 and the failure to qualify for USA 1994.

My first memory of following England was France 98, when perhaps England’s greatest squad at a World Cup lost to Argentina on penalties. What could’ve been remains the question consistent on every Englishman’s lips, after Owen scored a Madarona-sque goal, but the match will forever be remembered for Beckham’s impudence when he managed to earn an early bath for sticking out his leg and catching Diego Simeone.

2002 was similar heartbreak, when a goofy, bucktoothed young man called Ronadinho put the ball in the net with an astounding leaf-drop shot that defied the Newtonian laws of physics and gravity.

The arrival of Wayne Rooney in Euro 2004 signalled what proved to be another false dawn, as the hot-headed Liverpudlian stamped on Ricardo Carvalho’s family jewels in 2006.

Ronaldo, then an impish young man who had the temerity to wink at the bench after Rooney got sent off, smashed home the penalty that took England out and that was perhaps the last respectable performance in the World Cup.

Four years later, England were absolutely torn to shreds by a counter-attacking young German side 4-1, showing the gulf of class between the English and the continent’s elite.

The ignominy continued in 2014 when England even failed to make it out of their group consisting of Costa Rica, Italy and Uruguay which brings us to 2018 when even the most optimistic of fans no longer expect anything.

The only bright side for Gareth Southgate’s young guns is the fact that it can’t get any worse from here. Even if England fail to get out of their group, they will only be emulating the 2010 bunch. In the same token of cautious optimism is the fact that this bunch – the likes of Harry Kane, Marcus Rashford, Raheem Sterling and Dele Alli – haven’t been scarred by the nation’s expectations or past failures. But if history has taught us anything, then even cautious optimism might be a bridge too far. 

In the novel from which this article’s headline is shamelessly borrowed, Milan Kundera quoting Plato’s Symposium, had pointed out that all people were hermaphrodites until God split them in two, leaving the halves to wander the world seeking one another.  Love, he argued, is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost. Sadly, English fans, venturing across the globe in search of a fulfilling World Cup experience, are unlikely to find that in Russia. The only thing they are likely to find is what they've always had in World Cups - pain and suffering.