The sporting equivalent comes every four years, when England somehow convinces itself, despite a pile of evidence to the contrary, that it ought to win the World Cup. And every four years, this ends badly.
My earliest memory of disappointment was the 1982 World Cup, when I was 9. I remember filling out my World Cup wall chart in my parents’ house in North London with the string of zeros that marked England’s exit. The team made it to the quarterfinals in 1986 only to meet Argentina. Britain had recently defeated the country in what remains its last imperial war, over a strategically irrelevant archipelago of islands in the South Atlantic. The legendary attacker/cheater Diego Maradona scored twice, once brilliantly and the other time with what he later called “the hand of God,” although it was just his literal hand. That still rankles.
Then 1990 was Germany on penalties in the semis. No one talks about 1994. Four years later was another tragic blowout against Argentina. And 2002 was grim. I’d moved to New York by then and watched the loss to Brazil in a sticky pub on Third Avenue surrounded by my gloomy, pale compatriots. On to 2006: quarterfinals, again; lost on penalties, again. And 2010 was a 4-1 drubbing by the old enemy, Germany. The less said about 2014 the better. In 2018, the team somehow ended up fourth. In Qatar four years ago, England lost to its other, older enemy, the French.
There is an undeniable pattern here, in addition to not winning. England is stuck in some kind of middle rank — not the best, not the worst, always flattering to deceive, usually grinding it out until the gravity of reality takes over. This isn’t the cheery optimism of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ “Wait ’til next year.” This is deeper — an aching sense that things just won’t work out.
And yet. Here is a lightly edited Slack conversation between an English colleague and me the morning before England’s first 2026 World Cup match in June against Croatia:
Me: I don’t think I can watch
Colleague: general disquiet or something more specific?
Me: general disquiet
Colleague: yes, that’s understandable
Me: I don’t know when this started, but at some point I stopped enjoying watching England. It brings only pain. And any joy is merely the absence of pain.
Colleague: I’m not one to dissuade a man from well-earned angst, but this side does look very functional. I have them getting to the semis at a minimum. this might make it all more painful for you
Me: stop this right now. none of this false expectation nonsense!
Colleague: Germans know how to win, that’s all I’m saying.
The current England coach is German. He succeeds a handful of Englishmen, an Italian and a Swede. What Britain lost by leaving the European Union, it seems to be reimagining through the management of its national soccer team.
