World Cup fever? I'll put off going to the garden centre for now...

Press Association

Normally, in the run-up to a World Cup, I'd be in the throes of schoolboy giddiness. Wall charts obsessively studied, calendars blocked with every fixture, no matter what time the kick-off, and the sun and fresh air dutifully advised that, for the following few weeks, we'd be spending very little time together. But, until last Friday, the FIFA World Cup 2018 had generated little more than a "whatevs" from me. This was largely due to it being the FIFA World Cup, with all connotations of rum doings and brown envelopes, and secondly, because it was the World Cup in Russia, a country with hardly a great recent record of 'world in motion' inclusiveness.

But, then, Friday night came around and with it Portugal versus Spain (or, what has subsequently been revised to Ronaldo versus Spain), and all seemed to be right in the world. Since then we've seen Iceland hold out for a 1-1 draw with the mighty Argentina, replete with a Lionel Messi penalty miss, the Swiss holding Brazil and, even more stunningly, Mexico beating reigning world champions Germany. For those who couldn't care less about football or the World Cup, these results in just the opening weekend will mean little or matter less. But to some of us, they mean something, and this time, have momentarily obscured whatever it was that bred indifference on the run in.

That, though, is just football nerd talk. Tonight the reason 'most' of us in England watch the World Cup - England - means that working days are cut short, pubs are unusually full for a Monday, London taxis will be displaying the Cross of St. George without too much suggestion of distasteful nationalism, and even those who might otherwise show no interest at all in football, will be tuning in. For a brief moment, England's opening Group G match, against Tunisia, will create excitement, even hope. And an awful lot of cliches. There is some belief that Gareth Southgate, the England manager, is bringing a refreshing approach to the so-called "impossible job"; there is some latent belief that the England team's relative youthfulness will make a difference, not just tonight against Tunisia but all the way through into the knock-out stages. The truth is, we just don't know. No one does. As I often quote Danny Baker, "football is chaos".

With England today, as ever, we have to put prospects into context and balance. Yes, the squad is made up of Premier League players, and many drawn from Top Six teams. That surely counts for something. But our hubris at having a national side based around players from the most lucrative and watched domestic league in the world has led to too many false dawns before. England may well have been where association football began, and may, too, be where we've produced some high quality footballers ever since, but the thing we've never been able to grasp is that other countries have either produced better players, or have produced players that instinctively know how to win things - prettily or less so. Yes, England have suffered from poor refereeing decisions and have been unlucky in penalty shootouts, but those are the breaks. And penalties, whether regarded as a test of skill or not, are still just lotteries.

And, then, there's still 1966. To put England's one and only World Cup win into context, it was 52 years ago, just 21 years after the end of World War 2 (21 years ago to today, Labour won a general election landslide, the Princess of Wales died in a Paris car crash, Oasis released Be Here Now and Elton John was knighted. And these events all seem like yesterday). The point is that, apart from moments of joy in Italy in 1990 and the European Championships of 1996, England have been - like most participants in these competitions - a distinctly average team. Realistically, we've lacked true game changers, like France's Zidane in his day or Portugal's Ronaldo, still today. Yes, England have had and still have big-name, big-wage stars, but their profiles, wage packets and expensive choice of exotic car have rarely matched their delivery on the world stage, the international football pitch. That's not because they're bad players, or they've played for bad managers. They just haven't been as good as their opposition, and in some cases - South Africa in 2010 (including the worst game of football I've ever watched, England's 0-0 draw with Algeria) and that 2-1 defeat to Iceland in France two years ago - absolutely moribund.

But let's reflect a little. England are in this World Cup. Luminaries like Italy and The Netherlands are not. Each time England qualify for a tournament, they have done so on merit and at the cost of other equally worthy contenders. Tonight's opponents, Tunisia, may not exactly be a world beating force, but they qualified out of the African group - no easy task - and, despite not winning a World Cup fixture in 40 years, will be out to frustrate England. Southgate's youngsters will disregard them at their peril. Group G - which includes Belgium and Panama - is not going to be easy, but at risk of trotting out the 'there are no easy games' trope, there are...er...no easy games at the World Cup. Why should there be? True, some teams seem to be more likely to proceed than others, but as this weekend's opening games have proven, there are no rules as to who performs and who performs well.

So, strap in, order the pizza, take the phone off the hook and crack open the first beer. We've been there before, we'll be there again. Enjoy the ride, whether successful or a disappointment. This is still the World Cup, even with the slightly bitter taste of how it ended up being staged in Russia, even with England's history of failure and frustration. Someone has to win, someone had to lose. It wouldn't be football if it was pre-ordained.