Why England are doing us all a favour by playing so badly

Muddling through: Wayne Rooney is the one shining star in England's indifferent current crop

It’s the hope that kills you with England. In recent years the hope has come from increasingly desperate places. In Euro 2004 it came from a prodigious 18-year-old called Wayne Rooney. He’d score our goals. He’d lead us to glory. He’d tell us what to do.

In 2006 hope became a year younger in the form of 17-year-old Theo Walcott. When it became apparent he was in Germany merely as a tourist, I canned logic and put my faith in meaningless precedents. We couldn’t lose on penalties again, surely? “It’s our time,” I argued. “It’s the law of averages. How can it be that difficult for a team of professionals to win on penalties?” In the quarter finals against Portugal we scored one of our four penalties, David Beckham cried, and we all went home.

Last year things took a truly forlorn turn. With other avenues for optimism destroyed by a sobering failure to qualify for Euro 2008 and by years of painful, repeated evidence of ineptitude, I remember glibly predicting we’d win the World Cup because “we’ve got a very nice kit.”

We had also qualified impressively, but qualifying isn’t proof of anything other than an ability to steer clear of horrible embarrassment. Passing a driving test doesn’t make you Sebastian Vettel, it just demonstrates you can operate at a competent enough level not to run over pedestrians. And maybe do a reverse parking manoeuvre.

A central midfield three of Frank Lampard, Gareth Barry and James Milner is very much the reverse park of football: unspectacular, dull and unlikely to impress anyone. But like putting your car neatly between two others, such an uninspiring trio is also necessary sometimes.

Capello’s system is defined by a midfield that stops the opponents from playing and looks to spread the ball wide to create chances. Fine, but what happens against technically superior teams like Germany, Spain, Holland or Italy? Is the solid but resolutely one-footed Stewart Downing likely to unlock their defences under pressure at an international tournament?

It’s a system that does a job in qualifiers, as evidenced by Capello’s good-on-paper record since taking charge, but has an in-built admittance of inferiority which gives England supporters no cause for optimism whatsoever at Po-kraine 2012.

Frankly, this is for the best. There is no way England can match the aforementioned teams with its current crop of players. Wayne Rooney is the only member of the squad who consistently displays the touch, awareness and skill to trouble international sides.

We are a quarter-finals sort of team, and without a remarkable turnaround in footballing ability or a gigantic slice of fortune it’s unlikely we’ll be anything more than that for the next generation.

And yet… there’s always one plucky underdog that unexpectedly goes the distance in the finals. And the last time expectations were as low as they are these days was Italia ’90. Look how that turned out! Glorious defeat, sure. But at least it came one stage later than usual.

There’s that hope again. It’s a circle more vicious than piggy in the middle sessions at Stoke.